Angels Still Have Faces
by TrisakAminawn
Summary: Sephiroth has no experience helping someone who won't explain what's wrong, or really helping at all. But Angeal is arguing with Genesis and acting like the world is ending, and he has to at least make an attempt. Because they're friends, right? [Outsider POV Time travel.]
1. What Did You Do In The War?

**Angels Still Have Faces**

Chapter 1: What Did You Do In The War?

* * *

Sephiroth wasn't sure how long it had been going on before he noticed it. Could have been weeks.

Could have been that the day he first noticed Angeal running his hand over a perfectly ordinary steel banister with the same reverent attention he'd been known to pay his father's sword was the first day these behavioral tics began.

Even then, he couldn't exactly say he'd _noticed_ at first. Merely observed. Observed that his friend's mood had grown more thoughtful of late. That Angeal was paying more attention to things he had taken for granted, which was already far fewer things than Sephiroth or Genesis. That he'd developed a tendency to turn his face up to the sun and fill his lungs to their fullest capacity when out of doors.

He _noticed_ , in the sense of taking note, once he realized Angeal was arguing with Genesis.

They disagreed all the time, of course—his two friends had very different ideas about what was important. But they didn't… _fight._ Even when one of them seemed really annoyed, or even both, the next time he saw them it was always as though the spat had never happened.

He'd always assumed the sort of communication involved in this dynamic required having known one another from shortly past infancy, and tried not to consider it a shortcoming of his own, that he could not begin to understand it.

But now they had had a disagreement sometime around the beginning of the week, and it wasn't over the next time he saw them. In fact, he did not see them together for days in a row—which was not unusual, even now that the War had shifted to a passive footing and all three of them were in Midgar together much of the time—until on the fourth day, looking out a second-floor window, he spotted them together on one of the outdoor training fields once again exchanging harsh words, only for _Angeal_ to wheel around and storm off at the end.

It was less dramatic than a Genesis storm, but his back was stiff and his heels hit the pavement with a pointed sort of rage, and Genesis stared after him almost as baffled as Sephiroth felt.

Genesis was still on the training court when Sephiroth got down to him, and accepted an offer for a spar, but he was both more aggressive and less focused than usual, and curled his lip when Sephiroth asked about the argument. _Ripples form on the water's surface._ It was none of his business, apparently.

It _was_ none of his business. That didn't stop him from being—interested.

* * *

The mess hall at Shinra headquarters was technically designated a cafeteria, the one for 'security personnel,' but the troops and SOLDIERs who had spent time at the front all persisted in referring to it as the mess. Sephiroth didn't visit it very often, and even more rarely stayed to eat rather than grabbing a sealed drink and a plastic-wrapped sandwich and carrying them elsewhere, but when he did he always got a table to himself.

On occasions like this one, when the room was not especially crowded—it was three in the afternoon, relatively few non-SOLDIER military personnel were free who did not have the whole day to themselves, and relatively few troops on leave stayed in the building instead of visiting the attractions of Midgar—he tended to get a table to himself, surrounded by other empty tables. He had a _very_ good forbidding expression. He had been developing it since he was ten years old.

He was sitting close against the wall, both because it was always better to have something solid at your back and because it lowered the number of tables adjacent to his and raised the odds of being left entirely alone—people at adjoining tables made him look more approachable to his juniors in SOLDIER, overenthusiastic cadets, and troopers on dares—as he ate his way through a large portion of the day's lunch.

Cafeteria food was generally better than what they got at the front, if only because more of the ingredients were fresh, but there was a particular baked noodle _thing_ one of the cooks they'd had on campaign had introduced to the mess tent, that had been one of the only remotely pleasant eating experiences they ever got out there. Asked for his secret, the cook had reportedly said that it was a peasant recipe _designed_ to be cheap and filling, rather than an inferior version of rich people food like most of their menu. The man had recently been transferred to Shinra tower, and Sephiroth was perhaps indulging in a bit of nostalgia.

He knew without looking up that the body intruding into his space was Angeal, even before his friend slid a tray onto the circular table two seats to his left, and sat down. Angeal hadn't taken any of the noodle stuff, he just had applesauce, cheese, and a cup of tar-black coffee. When Sephiroth glanced up at his face, he looked like he _needed_ the coffee.

"Afternoon," said Angeal.

"Hello," Sephiroth agreed. "How was your mission?"

Angeal shrugged. "Tedious. But nobody died, and we cleared out the infestation. So a success." He seemed cheerful about it, but the disinterest also seemed real. He fiddled with his spoon. He wasn't wearing gloves. He hadn't worn them in weeks. "How was your inspirational speech?"

"It went fine." Sephiroth was actually fairly good at talking at length when he had cause, something that surprised a lot of people who listened to him converse first.

His speeches naturally took the form of lectures, but he'd taken note of other people's most effective communicating strategies over the past few years, and thought the addition of more dramatic language and short, vaguely optimistic sentences had improved his performance. SOLDIER was as much a propaganda unit as a combat one, after all, and even before he'd become definitively Shinra's strongest SOLDIER he'd been used in publicity work, because he photographed well. Giving intentionally bad speeches, he had learned early on, merely meant they made him memorize speeches other people had written for him, which was much worse.

"Do you think we'll be sent back to Wutai soon?" Angeal asked. The pleasant blandness was beginning to seem forced.

"I hope not," Sephiroth said frankly. "The men need time to recover."

"Don't we all," said Angeal, biting into his lump of cheese. He chewed it slowly, as though deeply contemplating the combination of salt, fat, and faint sharpness that was cheap white cafeteria cheese.

"Angeal," said Sephiroth, "are you leading up to something."

A startled, abortive laugh, deferred in favor of swallowing cheese rather than spraying it across the table. "I'm not subtle, am I." He scooped up a spoonful of apple sauce, placed the whole thing in his mouth, and pulled it free between his closed lips, keeping all the applesauce inside. His throat worked. He let out a voiceless sigh, and put the spoon down. Pushed his tray back as though abruptly revolted by the idea of food, or maybe just making space to lay his hands on the artificial wood surface of the table.

"Have you ever," Angeal asked, in a low voice that managed to avoid sounding _hushed_ through its sheer evenness, "had to kill civilians? Or have men under your command do it?"

Sephiroth looked sharply at him, wondering if this was the source of the strangeness somehow. If Angeal had had to do such a thing for the first time only recently, and…but it had been weeks since he returned from his last deployment, and anyway why would that make him act so grateful to be alive? Why would it make him fight with Genesis? "…I have."

"In the war?"

"Where else?" Sometimes after Shinra took a region, guerilla activity in the area would spike, and the Turks would trace it to a local population that was supporting the insurgents.

Early in the war, after their first burst of success had died down and the advance slowed, Sephiroth had done much of his early service hunting rogue ninjas behind the front lines, on the grounds that his speed was useful for it, while his size at the time had been impractical at the front. There had been more than one instance of executing collaborators. Department policy was exacting.

Angeal shrugged. As if Sephiroth might have had any number of occasions to slaughter noncombatants, and he hadn't wished to make assumptions. "How did you feel about it?"

"…did HR put you up to this?" Not that they had any particular record of hounding him about his mental health, but they were known for enlisting people's friends to pry into their business, and Angeal trusted authority most of the three of them, and would thus make the most likely patsy.

Angeal's shoulders shook with another startled laugh. "What? No. It's…" Grave again. "It's related to my argument with Genesis. There aren't that many Firsts to compare notes with, you know, and fewer I'd feel comfortable asking."

Using Sephiroth as an emotional baseline was certainly an unheard-of resort, which did signal desperation. "I'm not sure I understand the question."

Angeal's face did something strange, an understated grimace maybe. His eyes had drifted to his hands. They'd folded themselves together on the table. It was an uncharacteristic gesture, somehow. "It was different from killing enemy soldiers who had no chance against you, right?"

Sephiroth tipped his head. It certainly _was_ different, but he was not sure just how. Attacking enemies who posed almost no threat required only slightly more alertness than watching to see that an execution was not interrupted, and killing enemies as they fled was more challenging only inasmuch as it required either running after them, or target practice.

When you went into a village and your men dragged people out of their houses, the organized nature of the activity made it unlike battle. Even the greatest commander was never really _in control_ of a battle. The pleading, the cursing, the single sharp gunshots spaced even seconds apart—the gleaming shuriken flashing toward your exposed neck as you turned your face away….

Well, you were never _totally_ in control of anything. Whatever Hojo thought.

"It was," he affirmed, after too long a pause. Returned to Angeal's original question. "How did it feel, hm." He still wasn't the best person to ask, but Angeal had already explained why he was the only option, and he did want to give his best effort.

Cupped his hands around his tea, then looking down at them recognized the gesture as the Wutaian method of holding a teacup, adapted around the handle of the Eastern-style mug, and unfolded them again. "Disgusting," he said at last.

He'd never really thought about it before, because thinking about emotions was never useful and this one had not forced itself to his attention, but now that he had, the feeling associated with those memories…more than anything shared the same character as listening to Hojo gloat, or having to visit the sewers in the course of a monster hunt.

Angeal nodded slowly. Sephiroth still couldn't quite read his expression—he was always harder to read than Genesis, who might not always emote _sincerely_ but at least did it with enough emphasis that it was usually clear what he meant. Angeal was only unambiguous when he laughed, and even then there were sometimes layers, especially if he was laughing at one of his own jokes.

There was a pinch at the corners of his eyes, now. "You didn't want to."

Sephiroth shrugged. "That isn't a useful consideration at war."

"Isn't it?" Angeal's eyes dropped back to his coffee, which he swirled in the cup, watching it lap against the white-glazed crockery and run back down, leaving only the faintest trace of itself. "I guess I usually did think about whether something would be dishonorable, rather than if I _wanted_ to do it," he admitted. "I've never been faced with…that."

Sephiroth was surprised to feel one line of tension along his spine unbind. "Good."

When Angeal had been a Second, he'd spent a short while under Sephiroth's direct command, and now he thought about it Angeal was one of the ones he'd never considered putting into such a rotation. He'd kept him on the battlefield, facing equal odds against canny defending armies, and let other officers engage in the dirty work of securing the rear. It seemed other commanders since had all concurred.

Angeal had looked up sharply at that one word, but his expression didn't seem angry, nor did he look like he had figured out that Sephiroth had kept him out of such things on purpose.

For a second it seemed he would say something, eyeing Sephiroth's expression, but then his gaze dropped again. He reached blindly for his coffee, and took a sip. "Genesis doesn't…I don't think he _enjoys_ it, exactly, but he likes even less doing things he dislikes, so when he's had to kill civilians he makes it into a—a story, where they're wicked conspirators who deserve what's coming to them, and he's justice, and there's no reason to feel bad."

Sephiroth…could see that very easily, now Angeal had described it. Genesis building a narrative around this brutal act of war so that it was a literary drama, one that made him righteous as well as powerful. It probably did help. If Sephiroth had had half as much imagination as Genesis he might have done something similar himself.

Angeal's hand tightened around his mug. "And feeling good about what he's doing means he gets…carried away. He wiped out two whole villages last year, when he was just supposed to question them all and kill the ringleaders. I only just heard about it."

Sephiroth had wiped out a village once when he was sixteen. Not because he was carried away, though. He'd been on a mission to make an example. "You're angry that he doesn't regret it."

" _He's_ angry that I think he did something wrong." Angeal's lips pressed together. They were always less visible than Genesis', being nearly the same color as the rest of his face, but it still looked odd when they vanished altogether. His knuckles were white.

"It isn't that any of us are innocent," he said quietly, "but what is our pride worth if our honor depends on calling whatever we do 'right,' instead of trying to find the right thing to do."

Sephiroth shook his head. His pride was worth a lot to him, but he was never sure if he understood what Angeal meant by _honor._ Genesis had once said uncharitably that neither did Angeal.

"He won't _listen_ to me!" The words burst out between clenched teeth, slightly louder than the rest of the conversation had been, and Angeal's cup _cracked_ sharply in his hand, and suddenly there was coffee spreading over the table and spattered over both their faces, and Angeal was holding a fistful of pottery shards that was beginning to ooze blood into the base of the mug, which had fallen onto the tabletop still containing a few milliliters of coffee.

Angeal's expression was blank-faced shock, and Sephiroth was torn between concern and the urge to burst out laughing, and as usual compromised by showing nothing at all.

He blinked hard, then leaned forward to pluck the stack of paper napkins from their holder in the middle of the table and begin dropping them in the spill before it could start to drain onto the floor or into their laps, except for the one he used to blot the coffee spray from his own face and chest. Angeal took his coffee with sugar. He was going to need to wash his hair tonight. "Put those down," he ordered Angeal, because two seconds was quite long enough to be dazed in the middle of the mess hall with people watching.

"Open your hand and stop holding onto the pieces," he repeated, when there was no immediate response.

Honestly, Angeal was a grown SOLDIER, he'd been First for years, this kind of accident usually only happened to new members of the Department. "Carefully. And then get to Medical so someone with tweezers can make sure you don't heal with any fragments in your hand to damage your tendons."

Tendon injuries were the _worst;_ healing magic could fix almost anything else with no worse than a faint lingering ache—mended bones were often stronger than before—but even magic never entirely restored a tendon or ligament to its pristine state once it was cut or torn.

The oldest SOLDIERs these days were just turning forty, and while their visible aging was if anything behind the curve of the standard population—except the ones with baldness in their families, that was proceeding apace—there were complaints of deep aching, and a few who had been especially cavalier with their joints in the overconfidence of youth were on the brink of applying for retirement on account of chronic pain. Angeal could not be allowed to permanently damage his dominant hand by coping badly with frustration.

Angeal lowered his hand to the table before opening it. Tipped the mess of shards out and looked blankly at the ones remaining, either embedded in his flesh or small enough to be glued by the welling blood. Shook himself. "I," he said, and then his eyes focused again. "I, yes, you're right. I apologize."

"No need." Sephiroth gestured toward the exit with a balled-up napkin half-soaked in coffee. "Go on."

Soon after Angeal departed a cafeteria staffer hurried up to insist on cleaning the spill up properly, and since Sephiroth was neither invested in coffee mopping nor possessed of the proper equipment, he wordlessly moved his tray to an adjacent table. This transferred a small part of the coffee spill, but since these tables had to be wiped down regularly anyway, he doubted this did any harm.

He ate the rest of his lunch rapidly and without really tasting it, and left.


	2. Live The Nightmare Again

**Angels Still Have Faces**

Chapter 2 Live The Nightmare Again

* * *

He dropped by Angeal's office the next day, about twenty minutes after the computer system noted that his friend had checked in from another simple monster-hunting mission. Sure enough, the man was there reviewing the daily paperwork.

Even before Sephiroth made a noise, Angeal looked up. Something foreign flashed across his face before he quirked a wry smile and held up his open right hand for inspection. He _still_ wasn't wearing gloves. Apparently his newfound desire to appreciate any and all possible textures trumped the value of protection even after an injury they could have prevented.

The searching look Angeal had given him yesterday, asking how it had _felt_ to oversee the execution of enemy civilians…that look had appeared a lot lately, now that he thought about it. What was he looking for? What was _Sephiroth_ looking for?

He asked, "The verdict?"

"Medical said I've been working too hard," said Angeal.

"You have some leave stored up," Sephiroth pointed out. He didn't know this because he was a busybody, he knew this because Angeal _never took time off._ Even _he_ periodically indulged in spending two or three days straight not leaving his apartment, reading books in his pajamas and eating everything in his freezer. Angeal somehow managed to keep a small collection of houseplants alive using only his standard off-hours. Sephiroth had killed his last three gifts; one had been a cactus. "Why don't you go visit your mother?"

The expression Angeal turned on him at this was—peculiar. Like some sort of admixture of spooked and…Sephiroth didn't have a good word for it. Something soft. "Maybe I will," he allowed.

He probably wouldn't.

There was a mission to the Banora region later that week—just putting down Spirals that were breeding out of control, but the creatures were tough enough it wasn't being offered to anyone below Second even in teams. Sephiroth e-mailed Angeal about it, got the message back, _Thanks._

He put it down as his good deed for the month, and applied himself to duty rosters for another hour before heading to the VR simulator room to see how many dragons he could convince it to give him.

* * *

As it turned out, Sephiroth's advice had been very bad. He should have known better than to expect otherwise.

In a way it was good Angeal had gone south as a mission, instead of on leave. If he hadn't had a pickup scheduled he'd probably never have made it back. As it was, he got off the helicopter like a sleepwalker and made his way straight to his quarters in the SOLDIER barrack complex just outside the tower, blowing off his debrief which, even after a mission like this where it would be more of a check-in, was unheard-of for him, and didn't come out again.

Sephiroth learned of this the next morning, when as Angeal's sole superior officer he got an e-mail notifying him of this delinquency. Genesis never took protocol very seriously so if these e-mails had been paper they would have fed a merrily crackling fire by now, but this was only the second time the system had spat one out for Angeal.

Sometime around noon, Angeal called in sick.

When the standard workday ended, Sephiroth gave in to niggling uncertainty. Normally Angeal calling in sick after being out unexcused all morning would be merely an event. Something to tease him about after he got back on his feet, possibly—for Genesis, if not for Sephiroth. (He would admit he occasionally fed his most talkative friend a topic to take advantage of and then stood back to enjoy the verbal carnage.) But today…well.

Nothing had been normal about Angeal, lately.

There was no answer when he knocked. He tried his phone—heard the accompanying ringtone from the other side of the door. There was no further acknowledgment from within.

Either Angeal was deeply asleep, or he'd called in dishonestly sick and gone out somewhere without his PHS. Sephiroth found he urgently needed to know which.

If it had been Genesis, Sephiroth would have had to resort to breaking and entering. It wouldn't have been terribly hard, though he might have had to compensate his friend's landlord the cost of the door. But Angeal lived in company housing, part of the larger Shinra complex attached to the Tower, and as his exasperation mounted Sephiroth availed himself of one of the many sundry prerogatives scattered in his path as he climbed Shinra's meaningless command chain, and punched in an override code that would open any door in the barracks.

The door beeped and slid open.

Angeal was sitting on his sofa. On the surface of it, this was normal; Angeal quite liked his sofa, and had been very pleased at the promotion that gained him quarters large enough to have one.

His hands were laced together between his knees, and he was looking in the direction of his television but not quite at it. It was not on. His shoulders bowed in. With perfect inward-turned stillness, he was still every bit the picture of desolation Genesis managed at his most dramatic, and then some.

He looked up. "Sephiroth," he said. It could have been called toneless, but there _was_ a tone to it—a sort of flat surprise at identifying the intruder, strong enough it was as though he would have been less surprised had his visitor turned out to be a keypad-using chocobo.

Sephiroth stepped inside and closed the door behind him. Angeal wasn't dying, but he clearly wasn't well, either.

He was in full uniform, with mud on his boots. His PHS lay on the coffee table along with a literary magazine Genesis had subscribed him to, a weapons catalogue, and two pieces of junk mail. Also an empty mug. The space as a whole was still about as orderly as ever, and there was no way of knowing how long the mug had been there, but in context it seemed vaguely ominous.

"Did…your visit to your mother not go well?" Sephiroth asked. Because there were no visible physical symptoms, and he could not imagine anything that could have happened while killing giant heavily armoured arthropods could have provoked…this.

"She killed herself," Angeal said, in a voice with no emotion at all in it.

To put the lie to that, he then burrowed into himself, as if he could hide from the words, shoulders rising around his face, and repeated, "She _killed herself._ Practically in front of me! I thought it would be fine this time. Because nothing happened yet. But she just. Poisoned her own tea. Because of me."

"I…don't see how it could be your fault," Sephiroth ventured.

Angeal made a peculiar hissing sound through his teeth and didn't answer.

For lack of anything better to do, Sephiroth sat down in the chair next to the sofa. Now that he knew Angeal was not dying or actively self-destructing, he should perhaps give him back his privacy—he had not, after all, been invited. But on the front lines in Wutai men who were grieving were never left alone until their squad was sure they were rational, and when this informal policy was neglected there was a distinct spike in mortality.

There were no obvious enemies in Midgar for Angeal to expose himself to recklessly, unless you counted low-level monsters, but it still seemed best to keep an eye on him. At least until he was asked to leave. At that point he could reevaluate.

They sat in silence for some time. Angeal only had a silent, digital clock and it was by his bed, but Sephiroth estimated about eighteen minutes.

"Why now?" Angeal asked quietly. It sounded like a very important question to him.

Sephiroth didn't have an answer.

A few minutes after that, there was a knock on the door. Sephiroth began to stand, then considered that this was not his home. When he looked toward Angeal, he at least seemed aware of the noise, if not necessarily planning to do anything about it.

There was a second knock, then the visitor tried the knob. The door rattled for a second, and then the keypad beeped and Genesis let himself in. Whether he had Angeal's personal code or had gotten hold of an override hardly mattered. He pulled up in surprise when he saw both Angeal looking up belatedly and Sephiroth twisting around in his seat to look at him.

"You _are_ here!" he blustered slightly. "Good. For all the documentation was showing, you might as well have dissolved into the aether. What happened?"

Angeal stared at his best friend for a few seconds. Of course Angeal and Genesis didn't usually coddle each other, and Genesis had no idea yet that this was a special circumstance, requiring special delicacy. An expression curdled finally across Angeal's impassive face—anguish, but also a strange and formless rage. Then he sighed, and looked away, and there was only weariness. "Mom's dead," he said. "Pull up a chair."

The chair Sephiroth was sitting in was the only one with a cushion, and Genesis was forced to step into the next room and take one of the two hard-backed chairs that sat beside Angeal's kitchen table. He pulled it up to the opposite end of the couch, and now he and Sephiroth were flanking Angeal's position.

The plants weren't looking very well, Sephiroth noticed. Had Angeal forgotten to water them? Or watered them too much? He himself had been guilty of both; even punctilious research into the needs of a species could not triumph over not truly caring about its survival.

At least once, he had done nothing scientifically wrong. _You have to repot them regularly,_ Angeal had told him. _Especially in the Midgar climate, no one's sure why. I use potting soil imported from around Kalm, you just…be very careful with the roots…._ He'd demonstrated on one of his own, a thing of vines. By the look on his face as he separated the pathetic life-form very gently from its earth without harming the white underground tendrils, he found it a meditative experience. Sephiroth had been unable to muster that level of interest in his friend's hobby. It had probably been a bad idea to express as much interest as he had; it was why he'd been given three separate opportunities to fail.

Watered correctly and permitted the right amount of sun, his potted hydrangea had gotten by for two months before withering away into black dust. This was apparently about average.

Had Angeal been ignoring his plants even before his mother's suicide?

"What happened?" Genesis asked after waiting a surprisingly long time. "Miz Gillian…"

"…she never liked you," Angeal observed detachedly. Genesis reared back, hurt flashing across his face. "But she was always kind to you, anyway. I thought she had something against your parents." He raised his eyes, and a bitter sort of humor creased one cheek. "But it was always her, really."

"…my friend, the fates are cruel…"

Angeal closed his eyes. Sephiroth had never seen him seem so tired. "They are, aren't they."

That seemed to put an end to the conversation. The three of them sat there, in strangling silence—Sephiroth wanted to leave; Angeal wouldn't be alone anymore so his duty was complete. But getting up and going would draw his friends' attention in a way he did not think he could bear just now, so he sat. Angeal was looking at the ceiling now instead. Genesis was contemplating the cover of the catalogue. Sephiroth was fairly sure he didn't actually have an interest in a 'rotating double magazine for twice the firing power.'

(It also sounded like something that was bound to get fouled up and become useless in actual field conditions. It was amazing just how much of Shinra's advanced technology was no use at all in reality.)

After about ten minutes, Angeal's phone started ringing again. There were only so many people who had this number; most SOLDIERs kept in touch through e-mails and Angeal while fairly friendly in person wasn't gregarious enough to hand his number out easily. Genesis was here, so it was probably an official communication. After several rings Genesis stirred uncomfortably. "Are you going to answer that?"

"No."

"Ripples form on the water's surface," Genesis mumbled, and settled back again. Sephiroth was used to his using _Loveless_ as a sort of punctuation, but this was the least dramatic delivery he'd ever heard from him. He found this even more unsettling than Sephiroth did, apparently. Well, he _did_ have even less information, and he'd known the deceased.

Angeal's PHS kept going off; Angeal kept ignoring it. Finally Genesis picked it up and flipped it open. "Ah," he said, scrolling through missed call notifications, then messages. "It's Hollander. He's heard you're unwell and wants you to come by for a checkup. Quite vociferously, actually." He looked up from the tiny screen. "You know how I detest being poked and prodded so normally I would endorse your newfound talent for truancy, but honestly a medical intervention seems called-for."

"If that man comes near me, I'll kill him."

This pronouncement was delivered in very nearly Angeal's usual level voice with its usual firm emphasis, with that precise delivery he used to project special sincerity, but there was an extra strand of pure poison that Sephiroth had never heard before, and did not like.

He respected the sentiment, though, even if it wasn't very practical.

Genesis's eyebrows drew together, almost enough to wrinkle his brow. " _My friend, do you fly away now?_ "

Angeal snorted, as if at some obscure joke. "I'm not going to see Hollander."

It wasn't as if Angeal was actually _ill._ He didn't need a doctor just now. "I'll inform him of the situation," said Sephiroth.

Angeal frowned, but nodded.

He was eligible for a week of compassionate leave for his mother's death so long as he wasn't reassigned to the front; Sephiroth would put the paperwork through once he got back to his office. For now he took out his own phone and tapped out a brief e-mail to Hollander to the effect that Angeal's health was acceptable, but his mother was dead. He did not require a doctor, just some time off.

"How do you deal with Hojo?" Angeal was asking him suddenly, and Sephiroth blinked at his friend, caught off-balance. Flipped his phone shut a little uncertainly.

"I avoid him as much as possible," he responded with only a little delay.

"See?" Angeal said to Genesis.

Genesis waved an irritable hand toward Sephiroth. "Do you seriously mean to suggest that _he_ is an appropriate model for solving _any_ social dilemma?"

"He offends fewer people than you do," Angeal pointed out, and almost sounded like his usual self. Genesis looked offended. Well, so was Sephiroth. No, he was hardly the most competent social operative, but that didn't make him utterly incompetent, and avoiding Hojo had always worked _quite_ well for him.

Except when it hadn't, but unpleasant things _happened_ occasionally. It was merely a matter of minimizing risk factors.

"What, did you conduct a survey?"

"Heh. I've been cleaning up your messes for almost twenty years, Gen. Not that I don't make messes of my own, but…" Angeal shook his head, and it was fond, it _was_ —mingled with exasperation in the way Angeal frequently did. But there was sorrow there, or Sephiroth thought there was, and almost definitely anger, and Genesis' face bent again as it had at the comment about Gillian disliking him.

Then his mouth drew tight. "You're different."

Angeal gave him a sour look, lips thin. "I'm _grieving._ "

"No, you've been weird for weeks," stated Genesis, and Sephiroth took a moment to glare at him too, because even _he_ knew this was not the right time to pursue a longstanding argument. " _Quietly, but surely._ You can't tell me this was all about _peacekeeping actions_ taken _years_ ago. There is simply no way you didn't know these things were going on, even if you kept out of them."

"…I didn't want to know," Angeal admitted, the words dragged out of him. Sephiroth studiously contemplated a tiny somewhat shriveled cactus with a red top. "So I didn't. What kind of honor is that? We've always been making sacrifices to our dreams."

"Yes," snapped Genesis. "That is how it _works!_ "

Sephiroth's head snapped back around, and he stood. "That's it. Out."

Genesis' eyes widened for a moment, and then he seemed to decide he couldn't mean it. " _My friend, the fates are cruel._ If you want your dreams to come true, you can't expect the world to just _reward your princip—ack._ "

Sephiroth had grabbed his smaller friend by the back of the collar and was dragging him out the door. He probably wouldn't have made it if the room had been larger, or Angeal had decided to have his breakdown in bed, meaning there would have been two rooms to get through, but Sephiroth outweighed Genesis and had surprise on his side, and they were already most of the way into the hallway before Genesis thought to snatch at Angeal's doorframe, then grab for his captor's wrist.

Sephiroth jerked the door shut behind them and only then let go. He might not know what he was doing, but he was able to identify _being completely non-constructive._ "No," he said firmly.

" _No?_ " demanded Genesis, as if sufficient outrage might change Sephiroth's mind.

"No," he repeated. "His mother is dead. You will not…harass him. Your hurt feelings are not important. This is _not the time._ "

Genesis looked mutinous. He knew Sephiroth was right, but he did not accept being dictated to. "Your military authority doesn't extend to Angeal's apartment, _General._ "

"Gillian Hewley killed herself," said Sephiroth flatly.

Genesis' eyes widened fractionally. Narrowed again, and he looked sharply away.

" _Even if the morrow is barren of promises, nothing shall forestall my return._ " With that, he swept away down the hall, radiating resentment. Hopefully he would return contrite.

Or at least willing to wait until the worst of Angeal's grief had passed to address his resentment over whatever Angeal's problems were with Shinra's wartime policies.

* * *

Angeal looked up again, when Sephiroth went back inside. "He left?" he asked, in disappointment and resignation and relief—one of those, or all of them, Sephiroth couldn't be sure.

He nodded, and shut the door behind him.

Angeal's sword was in its stand beside the door. Sephiroth's first instinct was to pick it up and offer it to him, as a comfort, but he might not want it now. It was a symbol of his family, but it was his mother that had hurt him. It was a symbol of his strength, but he was wracked with some sort of pain over the war, even if this specific blade had not been wetted with Wutaian blood. Sephiroth held position, and did not approach either weapon or wielder.

Dark eyes followed his gaze to it anyway. "I just keep thinking the same thing over again," Angeal said.

"What."

"'Angels only have one dream.'"

That was all. Sephiroth waited, but that was all. He didn't recognize the quotation. Angeal didn't offer to explain. His gaze drifted away again, to settle on the off-white surface of the opposite wall.

The plants were wilting, the television was not on, and the PHS had stopped buzzing. There was mud on Angeal's boots and dust on the coffee table, and suddenly Sephiroth felt too large for this space, despite its actual inhabitant outweighing him by some twenty pounds and being only slightly shorter, felt his limbs protruding intrusively in every direction and the still air rasping against his bones. Self-consciously, he brought his elbows in, and drew his right foot close beside his left.

As if that could possibly help with the fact that he had barged in here without invitation and taken it upon himself to throw Angeal's closest friend out.

Summoning his sword would make the situation worse.

He moved forward, took up his place in the only comfortable chair again, though he didn't bother trying to make himself comfortable this time. He rested his weight near the edge of the chair, and leaned forward over his own knees—the furniture was standard issue, and thus rather too short for either of them.

"Angeal," Sephiroth asked. "What is the angels' dream?"

The look Angeal turned on him now was so heavy and so sad it almost looked like pity. "To be human."

That was all he would say on the matter.

* * *

 ** _A/N:_** _I've seen two hobbies listed for Angeal, gardening and photography. I did the thing where I was like 'how would that even work?' on the gardening and then I had a complicated explanation and it wound up in a story so it's a Thing now. ^^;  
_


	3. Deeds Devils Would Abhor

**Angels Still Have Faces**

Chapter 3 Deeds Devils Would Abhor

* * *

Sephiroth really didn't feel he could leave, especially now that he'd driven Genesis off, but it wasn't as if he knew what he was doing. Sitting in silence was clearly inadequate, however—not only was he doing nothing productive, it was _unpleasant._ For both of them, probably.

Angeal had already been sitting on his sofa for hours before Sephiroth got here, and it was clearly unhealthy.

Enough of this. In a situation that needed dealing with, he _had_ an applicable skillset: he took command. To his surprise, it seemed to work.

He insisted that Angeal go have a shower, not because he had had time to get really filthy—the Spiral fight before he'd stopped by his mother's house and watched her inexplicably die of tea had left only a few marks—but because it was a resort of his own in times of stress, which he'd overheard both SOLDIERs and troopers refer to needing, suggesting his own experience had more general application. He'd read about psychological benefits to the act of cleansing. It was a _logical_ suggestion.

When Angeal came out again, Sephiroth had food laid out. Wutaian takeout was ironically a staple of order-in Midgar dining and Genesis and Angeal had long since identified the best Southern Islands restaurant in Midgar that delivered, but under the circumstances Sephiroth had avoided both, and instead ordered a sort of Corelian flatbread dish that was baked covered in boiled fruit, cheese, and cured meats, and which was lately becoming popular.

Mostly because he'd inadvertently memorized the number to the delivery place due to its persistent advertising jingle.

When the shower shut off, Sephiroth was just setting down two of Angeal's plates—he'd paid for this food, he was eating some—on the coffee table, and the bathroom door opened on his frowning attempts to remove one of the wedges the flatbread had arrived cut into onto a plate, without losing all the baked-on foodstuffs on top. The cheese seemed intended to serve as a sort of glue, but it would rather adhere to itself than the bread, mostly because of the layer of salted jam laid, he felt unwisely, between them. This really required some sort of flat serving device, as was used for pie. Angeal stood in the doorway watching him for several seconds, hair dripping onto the cheap carpet.

"You're supposed to use your hands," he said after a while, and he was smiling the way he often did when Sephiroth was inadvertently ridiculous, but even this was sad.

Sephiroth set down the unhelpful fork and transferred his frown to his black leather gloves. "Take them off," Angeal advised, finally stepping out of the door frame, and turning toward his bedroom. "They'll get greasy. I'm going to put some pants on."

While Sephiroth wouldn't have objected if Angeal had chosen to make up for his fast in nothing but a white towel around his waist, he concurred that it usually seemed easier to face the world with pants.

The towel had been transferred to Angeal's head when he came out again, pants on—they were blue and probably meant for sleeping in, not part of his uniform—to sit down beside a plate full of only slightly mangled Corelian flatbread. "I don't really have an appetite," he said, even as he balanced the plate on his knees.

"Eat anyway," Sephiroth directed, as he had often been directed in his childhood. He had been _much_ better-treated than Hojo's other long-term specimens, but even very small mako injections threw the body into internal confusion and distress, so he had often been indifferent to eating.

Two of the lab assistants, one of the only women Hojo had accepted as a trainee and a man with several younger siblings, had hit upon the idea of bringing him more interesting food to ease their work of keeping him nourished. Hojo had terminated their internships when he noticed, for disrupting his healthy balanced diet. "You…need the strength."

He'd wanted that sentence to sound kind; suspected all he had sounded was uncertain. But Angeal picked up the wedge of flatbread and bit into it.

Sephiroth would have felt more naked without his gloves, if Angeal hadn't been literally half naked. He took a careful bite of his own flatbread.

It wasn't bad. Definitely greasy. Definitely transferring some of that grease to his hands. Hojo would be appalled at the amount of salt. He took the next bite after that thought vengefully.

Angeal seemed to be recovering his appetite nicely as he went, proving that whatever condition his heart was in, his stomach was determined to survive.

"I'm sorry," Sephiroth said, when enough food was gone that Angeal should be secure from any significant physical deterioration for several days. "About sending you to see your mother. I thought she would help."

That was what mothers were supposed to do, wasn't it? Watch over their offspring like brooding griffins. He'd sometimes thought, as a small child, that if his own had survived she might have interceded to soften Hojo's strict standards, or kept Professor Gast from going away and dying, though the latter idea was illogical in the extreme.

Angeal shrugged a little. "Easy mistake to make. So did I."

He let his breath out in a sigh, but the distress seemed less crushing than what had gone before. The food or the shower had helped. "I…should have known better, I guess. But she was my mother. She loved me." One hand tightened into a fist, and the other shoved the final end of a crust of flatbread into his mouth and out of sight.

He'd gone to her for help, and she'd hurt him. That probably hadn't been her reason—Sephiroth was hardly an expert in suicide, but he associated it mainly with an escape from unbearable pain, so he presumed Gillian Hewley had merely been too preoccupied with her own suffering to take her son's into account.

Uncharitably, he was determined to hold it against her. She had not been his friend. Angeal was.

"I'm sorry," Sephiroth said again.

Angeal shrugged again. Reached up and pulled the sodden white towel off his head, so his hair fell down around his ears in messy clumps, and dropped it on the sofa. Sephiroth tried not to be distracted from the serious conversation by the wet patch this created on the upholstery; that was ridiculous, it was Angeal's sofa to treat as he wished. "It's not your fault. You had a good idea. Mom just…"

He shook his head, and seemed likely to drift into abstraction again. That wouldn't do. He needed to be distracted.

"What was wrong?" Sephiroth asked. It was not what a good friend would do, perhaps, prying instead of letting Angeal speak in his own time, but curiosity had been gnawing him for weeks, and at least he hadn't made an accusation of it. And Angeal's mother certainly hadn't helped with whatever it was. He'd gained a full new set of burdens. "Before."

"I had a…dream," Angeal admitted unwillingly. "The three of us were all…monsters. Genesis killed everyone in Banora. You killed…a small town, and later Midgar."

That stung. It was one thing to be the strongest, he _knew_ that concept balanced on the knife's-edge of 'most monstrous,' but he didn't expect to hear that from his close peers. "And you?" Sephiroth asked. Partly because he'd heard that this sort of talk was meant to get poison out, and the most painful part was therefore probably important to speak, but just as much he hoped to cushion his own discomfort at this _dream_ with more detail.

Angeal snorted. "Oh, I didn't kill anybody. Even myself. I made Zack do it."

"Zack?"

"A promising young SOLDIER I'd mentored." A shrug. "He found me with Mom's body, and after what Genesis had done, he thought…" The pain, the _shame,_ was muted, but visible. Sephiroth had never thought Angeal the type to take a dream so seriously. But then, his mother had just reenacted one of the most wrenching parts of it in a disturbing manner.

That…wouldn't account for the last few weeks, of course. For the effect this dream had evidently had. "You told your mother about this dream?"

"Not even that, really. Well, not all the details. I mostly talked to her about…well. Genesis and I…." Angeal trailed off. "I never asked about your parents," he said abruptly.

This was true. Angeal had never been the type to ask personal questions. But if anything gave him the right, Sephiroth forcing his way into the midst of Angeal's grief for his own parent certainly must. "My mother was named Jenova," he said; it was all he had ever been told of her. "She is dead. My father…" He pressed his lips together. "Is Hojo." He'd never admitted it out loud before.

Angeal looked astonished. "I…don't think he knows you know that."

"He _hints_ ," Sephiroth muttered. Hojo had never been even half as subtle as he thought he was.

 ** _Wait._** "How do _you_ know?"

If there was one thing Sephiroth knew he hated—there were in fact many—it was people knowing things about him he did not know himself. Learning to read upside-down had been a massive stride forward in his development of personal agency.

"Ah—Hollander told me, actually." Angeal's left shoulder twitched in a shrug, and he stared down at his hands. "He claims to be mine."

Straightforward sympathy shot through Sephiroth's chest. Hollander was a loathsome little troll—not actually a small man, objectively, but he had a craven character and was sufficiently shorter than Sephiroth to make no difference. He was considerably less hateful than Hojo, although possibly even less worthy of respect, but Angeal had the childhood memory of a beloved father whom he treasured. Sephiroth could scarcely imagine having that taken away.

But Angeal was from _Banora_ ; it shouldn't even be a plausible claim. "How…" he said.

"Mom used to work for Shinra, it turns out. Before I was born."

…and after he was born she had moved to a backwater in the South to take up a marginal career in laundry? That was a statistical departure from the behavior of Shinra personnel as a whole; Shinra might have faults as an employer but they did pay well. And outside departments like SOLDIER and the Turks, and the upper echelons of the executive hierarchy, where outside bonds were viewed as a distraction, having a family to support typically improved employee loyalty, and was considered desirable.

 _This_ then was what Angeal had asked his mother about. And she had responded with _suicide._

What on this Planet was going on. Of all people, Sephiroth had never expected there to be a mysterious conspiracy surrounding _Angeal._

"What did she do before she left?" he ventured.

The corners of Angeal's mouth curled up, very slightly. A bitter expression which looked all wrong on him. "Lab assistant."

Oh. _Oh._

Oh no.

"I see," said Sephiroth.

"You do, don't you." Angeal's smile widened, but remained a bloodless thing. It didn't suit him. "I should have talked to you…sooner."

Sephiroth narrowed his eyes. "Is there…" Anything he could do. Any more Angeal wanted to say. He wasn't good at this.

Angeal shrugged. "It's fine. Thanks."

It wasn't fine.

"Your mother…"

"She did what she thought was right." Angeal closed his eyes, drew in a breath, opened them again. "I shouldn't have put that kind of pressure on her. But she did what she thought was right. I can't blame her for that."

Sephiroth could, but since she had put herself beyond his reach he supposed that wasn't useful.

"Always the same," Angeal mused, staring through the wall again. "Dreams and honor." He sounded like he wasn't sure what they meant anymore. If his mother's sense of honor had cost him her, Sephiroth was inclined to agree. And dreams were clearly determined to be no friends of Angeal's.

"Mm. But what's your alternative?" he asked drily. "Loveless?"

The smile that provoked was a lot more real, to Sephiroth's pride. "A difficult decision," Angeal agreed. "Genesis…" A shrug. "It works for him."

Sephiroth was suddenly, sharply aware of how he didn't have anything that 'worked,' the way Genesis had Loveless, the way Angeal had his family's honor, his ridiculous potted plants. Whether such things were useful, whether he _needed_ one, was an open question, but he had nothing of his own to suggest, to propose as an alternative. Obviously there _were_ alternatives, obviously the world was full of people getting by on different conceptual bases, but he couldn't bring a single one to mind just now. Unless you counted Hojo's self-aggrandizing science, or the way the President's life revolved around money and power.

He hummed agreeably.

"Hey," said Angeal. Sephiroth flicked his eyes up to Angeal's face affirm his attention was engaged.

"If you did try to destroy the world…would you want me to stop you?"

Sephiroth squinted. "Is this a trick question?"

Angeal squinted back at him. "No…?"

"Because if I were 'trying to destroy the world' I obviously _wouldn't_ want you to stop me, or I wouldn't be trying in the first place."

"Pfff." Humor animated Angeal's face for a second before fading out, not quite completely. "No. I'm asking the you _right now_ about the course of action you prefer toward this hypothetical insane Sephiroth."

"Ah." Sephiroth paused to consider. Hypothetical exercises he could do, even bizarre ones. "Well, obviously he shouldn't be permitted to continue. But, ah…" He paused again, this time looking for a delicate wording, which was not one of his strengths. "…I would recommend that you and Genesis bring a detachment of additional SOLDIERs, and be prepared to take casualties."

They couldn't take him, after all. They never had been able to, even when he _wasn't_ trying to kill them.

He doubted he could kill _everyone in Midgar_ before being taken down, though. He was the best, not actually unstoppable.

Angeal snorted, and when Sephiroth looked, he was smiling again. "We kind of underestimated you, didn't we," he said. Reached for another slice of flatbread. It was getting cold, and the cheese topping had stiffened, but Angeal bit off the end of the triangle with great decisiveness. "That's okay," he said around the mouthful. "I just wanted to be sure."

Sephiroth looked sidelong through his bangs. "I refuse to believe that if I'd said I preferred you to stand back and allow me to proceed, you'd listen. In the event it became relevant."

"Ha. No. But it's good for morale to know the real you would want me to stop you. If it happened." Angeal stuffed his entire mouth full of about half the slice of food, and Sephiroth rolled his eyes.

"As long as your mind is set to rest on that front," he said, only a little snippy.

Angeal shook his head. It took him several more seconds of chewing to be able to swallow enough flatbread to say, "You and Genesis are a lot alike sometimes." This seemed to make him sad. But then, so did everything just now.

Why did Angeal's morale need the assurance that Sephiroth was not the monster he had dreamed? Was it merely the things he and Genesis had done in the war, that Angeal had been happy to ignore for so long? If they were given such orders again, and Angeal was there to overhear and understand what _pacification_ was this time…would he try to stop them?

Angeal finished his cold flatbread, picked up the towel off the sofa—there was indeed a damp patch on the blue upholstery—and absently wiped his hands on it as he stood up. "Thanks for the food," Angeal said. "And…for coming over. I…really didn't expect it."

"…you've been worrying us," Sephiroth said. Not sure whether his actions required justification. "If you want to keep talking, that's fine."

"I think I'd sort of like to just…sleep," Angeal replied, in a manner that suggested he had sat down on the sofa over twenty-four hours ago and not really moved until Sephiroth ordered him into the shower.

"Ah. Should I…go, then?" Standing guard in a living room would be new, but not a terrible inconvenience. Certainly a less challenging prospect than sitting with Angeal trying to figure out if there was a right thing to say. But you weren't supposed to leave a grieving man alone…

A nod. "I'm okay," Angeal said. "We'll talk later." He hesitated, as Sephiroth retrieved his gloves and stood up. "Want to spar tomorrow?"

"…just the two of us?" Sephiroth asked. It had been a while since anyone had seriously proposed fighting him solo, and it was the two-on-one duels against Angeal and Genesis staged to try to give him a challenge that had first pulled him truly into the orbit of their friendship.

Angeal quirked his eyebrows, where Genesis would probably have gotten huffy at being undervalued. "Yeah, why not? I need more practice, and it should be fun."

Fighting Angeal wasn't exactly _difficult_ , but it could be…fun, certainly. Anyway if it would help Angeal feel better, it would be fine spending a little while bored. An easy training match would be a _lot_ less challenging than keeping Angeal company this evening had been, and he would get some exercise if nothing else. "Alright," Sephiroth said. It helped, he realized, to have the promise, to be leaving Angeal alone but not abandoned. "See you tomorrow."

"Good night," said Angeal, as Sephiroth let himself into the hall.

* * *

Angeal's leave paperwork was submitted before midnight and processed sometime the next morning, but since it was for grief and not illness there was nothing stopping him from meeting Sephiroth at one of the training rooms on the 49th floor, during the daily lunch break. He looked the same as ever—the Hewley sword was on his back, and a Shinra-issue broadsword in his right hand. There was no sign he'd failed to go to sleep.

"Did you eat already?" Sephiroth asked as the door slid open, and Angeal rolled his eyes.

"I don't actually need a _new_ mother, Sephiroth," he said, and went ahead into the training room without waiting for a response.

Well, persisting would make him angry if he wasn't yet; if his performance was notably poor Sephiroth could always lecture him about fighting in top form later.

"I had an idea," Angeal said, once they were closed in the training room together and he'd started flicking through the VR options menu on his PHS.

Sephiroth brought his thumb down on a generic woodland glade, subtropical, no simulated opponents. "Mm?"

Angeal spun the broadsword in his hand and offered it, pommel first, to Sephiroth. Looked away from his phone and up along the weapon's length when Sephiroth didn't take it. "How about you use this," he said. Tipped his head toward the heavy crossguard at his right shoulder. "And I'll use this one, for once."

Slowly, Sephiroth closed his hand around the hilt. Since acquiring the Masamune he'd never really used any other blade, but that had been only a few years ago and he'd originally trained with a SOLDIER's standard weapons. This one had been in Angeal's possession for long enough that there was a pattern of wear on the hilt matching his hand—a little broader than Sephiroth's own. It was probably better-made than average, then, since Shinra's mass-produced blades were often poorly tempered and prone to breaking. Even the good ones were less than sufficient to harness the full power of a SOLDIER.

It wasn't enough of a handicap to make this even, but it would help.

"You're not worried it will be damaged?" he asked, flicking his eyes toward the Hewley sword. _Use brings about wear, tear, and rust,_ he always said.

"Well, that is one reason I want you to train with something a little more fragile than your treasure-blade," Angeal said easily, as he reached up and pulled his weapon free from its magnetic sheath.

"But also," he swung it around, as if feeling out the weight—he did kata with this weapon, Sephiroth had seen him, but it was probably different to be planning to actually fight with it. "It's occurred to me that…something you can't put to use because you're so worried about damaging it…isn't much good to anyone. If it can't handle the consequences of existing in the world…then it might as well not exist."

His eyes were distant. He sounded—wry, if not quite bitter. He might have been talking about his mother; he certainly was talking about more than just his sword.

"Angeal," Sephiroth said. Stopped. Raised the standard-issue broadsword, instead.

He had always spoken best with a blade.

Angeal brought up his Buster—his preferred guard turned out to be different with a weapon this size, pulled back behind the right elbow as though for a charge rather than pointed into his opponent's face, ready to deflect. Sephiroth had seen that stance from him before, but only when the terms of the challenge were that Sephiroth would only defend, not counterattack.

Was he serious? Like this, his entire torso was open, which would be fine if he were up against someone slower than himself, but Sephiroth had always been faster. A Barrier might make this a valid strategy, since Sephiroth was using an ordinary sword.

"Are you going to use materia?" he asked. Angeal didn't often, especially in spars, but it wasn't out of the question, either.

Angeal grinned. "We'll see."

'We'll see' apparently meant 'if I decide I need it,' because a few minutes into the duel Angeal knocked him off-balance with an Ice spell erupting from underfoot and then took advantage of the fact that, for once, he had about half a meter more reach to go for Sephiroth's abdomen.

He wasn't worried about actually being gutted, even before the blade passed a centimeter short of him and merely clipped the edge of his coat, because he trusted both Angeal and his own skills, but it was disconcerting, this change in style.

Not just the addition of casting, which Angeal had always used sparsely enough that if he had been any less excellent at every other aspect of SOLDIER duty he might not have made First, but the way Angeal had begun rotating his sword technique, switching with little warning between first a version of his familiar conservative forward-center style, with its strong guard and focus on opening an opponent up for a targeted strike, modified only for the size of the blade, then next back into the oddly open style he'd begun the fight with, clearly designed to take full advantage of the heavy Buster-style weapon, and _not_ designed to keep the user safe.

Sephiroth could have landed half a dozen likely-mortal blows already, but had entirely passed up several of the openings because Angeal would almost certainly have landed a stroke on him in return. This new recklessness with his own wellbeing could not possibly be a good sign—why had he not made time this morning to track down a book on the grieving process?

For all that, Angeal wasn't falling short—in fact, in some ways Sephiroth didn't think he'd ever seen him fight so well. It might have been the better sword, though at that size it should have _lessened_ the variety of options available. How had Angeal's ancestors used the thing at all, without enhanced strength?

The natural thing was to assume that Angeal's size ran in the family and the Hewleys had all been powerfully built, but that niggling awareness that perhaps Hollander hadn't been lying, that Angeal might have no relation to the family that had left him that legacy…

The Buster sword clanged against his broadsword, inches from his face. "Getting distracted?" Angeal asked from behind his slab of steel. His eyes were bright.

Getting distracted by your _opponent's_ personal problems was ridiculous. "I'm so bored my mind is starting to wander," Sephiroth retorted, and shoved hard enough to send Angeal back several steps.

He loved Masamune, but he had to admit there were things he'd missed about wielding a smaller weapon. Footwork was more relevant, for one thing, which meant there was more call for effort even if you weren't actually being _challenged_.

Minimal effort was a good standard in battle, it maximized stamina, it wasn't just a matter of pride to him, whatever Genesis thought. But sometimes you wanted to...have some fun.

He was smiling.

* * *

 **A/N:** Apparently I'm making 'breaking midscene' the norm for this fic, how obnoxious of me.


	4. Where Did You Learn That Song You Sing?

**Angels Still Have Faces**

Chapter 3 Where Did You Learn That Song You Sing

 _ **A/N:** Ahaha back after way too long to finish that spar!_

* * *

 _The Buster sword clanged against his broadsword, inches from his face. "Getting distracted?" Angeal asked from behind his slab of steel. His eyes were bright._

 _Getting distracted by your opponent's personal problems was ridiculous. "I'm so bored my mind is starting to wander," Sephiroth retorted, and shoved hard enough with the broadsword to send Angeal back several steps._

 _He loved Masamune, but he had to admit there were things he'd missed about wielding a smaller weapon. Footwork was more relevant, for one thing, which meant there was more call for effort even if you weren't actually being challenged._

 _Minimal effort was a good standard in battle, it maximized stamina, it wasn't just a matter of pride to him, whatever Genesis thought. But sometimes you wanted to...have some fun._

 _He was smiling._

Angeal recovered from Sephiroth's shove, of course, without leaving any gaping openings, though he did seem to come closer to tipping over than he would usually have allowed himself. As though he'd forgotten falling was a potential hazard, until it started to happen.

He fell into his old horn guard for a moment, and then when Sephiroth failed to swoop in and push his advantage drew back into that risky, power-emphasizing window guard again, raising a challenging eyebrow as if to ask, _do you think I'm helpless?_

That was more like Genesis than Angeal, but it wasn't exactly out of character, not like some of the things he'd been doing and saying lately were. Sephiroth was hesitant to take the offensive, though—fights tended to end all too quickly once he did, and he wanted to draw this out.

The Masamune was only part of his power, after all.

Angeal charged, and Sephiroth spun out of the way, his borrowed broadsword licking in to take advantage of the vulnerability left by the failed swing. But Angeal had been ready for that and spun the opposite way, sped by the momentum of his blow, and brought his Buster Sword up between them, becoming almost more shield than blade, it was so broad.

Sephiroth's smile wouldn't quite show over their locked weapons, but he let it out anyway. This was good. Even if he struggled to read the changes in Angeal's style, he knew where he stood with a sword.

So did Angeal, and the certainty in his movements was growing by the second as he kept driving forward, still favoring power and the blade's edge more than usual.

He went on leaving openings, though. Shoulder. Side. Chest. Throat. Did he not _care_ if he got hurt, or did he trust Sephiroth not to take an opportunity to hurt him seriously in a friendly spar so he was being uncharacteristically reckless, or was he just too caught up in pounding out his frustrations against Sephiroth's guard to notice his own danger?

Sephiroth circled out after their next exchange of blows, ducked back into the cover of the simulated trees, a little care all it took to avoid noisy footfalls in the utterly predictable texture of the digitally rendered underbrush and mast. Masamune was always something of a hindrance in heavy cover, and unlike the Masamune, Angeal's Buster Sword could not be dismissed to fit through narrow spaces, which meant it should cause the wielder at _least_ as much difficulty.

Might as well capitalize on the advantages this smaller sword _did_ have.

He waited. Angeal wasn't following.

Almost too late he sensed the crackle of the oncoming firestorm—fire _was_ the best element to use against someone taking cover in woodland, if you didn't care about the woods, because ice and earth needed to be more precisely targeted and bolt tended to earth itself in trees rather than finding the opponent. He ducked and rolled, and kept rolling, awkwardly dodging the trees that were only pretending to be there but would still get in his way, only long experience ensuring that none of his hair was caught in the leading edge of the spell.

"How many materia are you carrying?" he asked, emerging from the remaining trees once the fire died, brushing simulated ash from one of his pauldrons.

Angeal was not detectably disappointed by his failure to set Sephiroth on fire. He waggled a forefinger, a smile pulling at his mouth. "Now, now. That would be telling." He surged forward again, blade leading.

Sephiroth would be mildly surprised if his friend had another spell of that power level in him, but didn't fall back into the surviving cover again to test the theory. He'd wanted to see what Angeal would do if he retreated; now he had. Steel crashed.

If this went on long enough, it would become a contest of stamina, which Sephiroth knew he would win. Angeal could keep going much longer than you'd expect of someone carrying that much bulk, but the capacity to keep functioning long after anyone else would have collapsed was one of Sephiroth's greatest strengths in the field.

Would it be demoralizing for Angeal, for it to end like that? Or would it be good for him, to push himself to exhaustion and work out the poison that way?

This was one of the reasons Sephiroth so rarely made this sort of effort. How did anyone ever know what anyone else needed?

"Did you sleep well?" he asked, stepping aside from an overhead blow in a whirl of hair.

"Like the dead," said Angeal, smirking.

Sephiroth…thought that joke had probably been in poor taste, but Angeal was the most normal person he knew, so it couldn't be _too_ outrageously morbid.

"You?" Angeal asked, as he brought out a tiny burst of Ice positioned just so, to obscure sight rather than damage. He seemed to be trying to learn to cast without being obvious about it. Advisable, but very out of character.

"Turned in late," Sephiroth admitted as he ducked blindly under the horizontal slash he felt coming behind the frost.

It was easier to admit that than to lie and say he had slept well, and better that bland admission than confessing to muddled dreams about hunting ninjas through a silent and abandoned Shinra Tower.

Those had led blurrily into a dream of finding Hojo alone on the Science levels brewing tea, which he'd known was poisoned, and having to come up with a plausible excuse for not drinking it; accidentally dropping it out the window had seemed like a good one even though it was an absurd mishap to pretend had occurred naturally, and the Science levels had never _had_ any windows, let alone ones that opened.

He'd found one anyway, in the way of dreams, but before he got around to figuring out how to convincingly drop his deadly teacup down sixty-seven stories he'd looked out to find all of Midgar burning.

There had been people there, flying above the fire, on wings feathered like desert gryphon tails, but one by one they were dropping from the sky into the burning city, as their fellows sliced the wings away with long, thin Wutaian blades.

Each hovered in place for the swords, letting it happen, as though mutilation and fiery death were something they _wanted_. They'd seemed somehow familiar, and he'd pressed himself against the glass trying to see, and one had turned its face toward him right before it fell, and he'd almost recognized—

He blocked Angeal's sword only an inch short of his face.

"Careful," his friend grinned. "You need your rest. If you let yourself get run-down someone might catch up."

Sephiroth rolled his eyes and shoved him back. This time, Angeal didn't lose his balance.

They traded blows around the artificial glade, false grass soft underfoot, and it was _fun_. Angeal wasn't a challenge, exactly, but he was more of one than anybody had managed to be in a long time, and more importantly he kept doing things Sephiroth didn't expect, which stove off boredom far better than the threat of death.

Finally, having failed in an experimental attempt to crowd Sephiroth back against a tree, Angeal made a particularly rapid charge, from very close in, closer than he could have safely stood if Masamune had been in play. He knocked the broadsword aside far enough to duck inside Sephiroth's guard, and then rather than try again to slice toward Sephiroth's torso and have it blocked at the last moment, he let go of the Buster Sword's hilt with his left hand.

The right continued to hold up the broad slab of the weapon like a wall between him and any chance of counter-attack, leaving him free to swing a punch at Sephiroth's jaw. Sephiroth swayed back from the blow. Angeal's bare fist just barely grazed the point of his chin.

And then the pommel of the Buster Sword smashed down on Sephiroth's knuckles, dashing his hand open.

The borrowed broadsword hit the training room floor with a ringing sound, and Sephiroth felt his mouth slip open in shock as he _threw_ himself backward in a long jump only barely fast enough to avoid the slice of the Buster Sword through where he had been.

Masamune slipped into existence in his left hand as he landed, and he lifted it into a diagonal front guard, eyeing Angeal warily.

Angeal for his part heaved a great breath and returned his sword to his back, raised both hands with the palm out, smiling crookedly. "I give," he said, "spare me the retaliation."

" _You_ give," Sephiroth repeated in disbelief, his hand on Masamune not shifting. "You _disarmed_ me."

"Which is extremely useful when you have _that,_ " replied Angeal. "Besides, you weren't even trying."

He wasn't _entirely_ wrong. Sephiroth let Masamune sink, as Angeal stooped to pick up the broadsword.

He wasn't going to _retaliate_. It had been a perfectly fair maneuver; no one outside a recreational dueling club was going to claim fists were foul play. Besides, Angeal had been having a bad week; if he wanted to end their spar on a high note Sephiroth could let him. "You took me by surprise," he said mildly, dropping Masamune to the side, and swinging it behind him into a tail guard.

"Bet that won't work again," was the reply, rather more wry than he liked to hear in someone he was trying to cheer up.

Sephiroth shrugged. "Probably not." Maybe once more, if Angeal waited long enough to try it.

"I'll have to think up another dirty trick."

Sephiroth raised his eyebrows. Angeal The Honorable, joking about dirty tricks? Maybe that was what made the joke—that he of all people would try anything truly underhanded, or that he was announcing ahead of time that he would try to be surprising, undermining his ability to actually achieve it.

"Genesis used to try that one on me all the time," Angeal said.

"What, punching you?" The misdirection wasn't especially out of character, but generally Genesis liked things…flashier than that. And that particular maneuver would only work against a left-handed opponent.

…had Angeal developed it just to surprise him?

"No, getting in close and disarming me. That's how I got so comfortable using my fists against someone with a sword." Angeal grinned. "He learned he had to withdraw pretty quick after the disarm if he didn't want a split lip."

Sephiroth smiled slightly. Genesis was rarely much for reminiscence, and when he did indulge it was usually in the form of private references between his friends, that made them laugh or groan or elbow one another. Sephiroth had always liked it when nostalgia struck Angeal in Genesis' absence, because it usually meant an explanation.

"You fought often?" he asked.

"Yes. Well, no, we hardly ever _fought_ , but we sparred a lot. After he got Rapier I had to get a lot more aggressive to score at all."

Sephiroth looked at the weapon now back in its place on Angeal's back. "You didn't have that sword yet?"

Angeal's expression darkened, and Sephiroth realized his mistake a beat too late. "No. No, I didn't get it until…after Dad died." He reached up and touched the end of the hilt. "Gen used to loan me his practice weapons for spars. Otherwise I just sort of…got by. Have you ever punched a Hippogriff in the face?" He shook out his right hand as if from the memory of driving knuckles into beak, but the grin sat on his face uneasily, and then bleached away. "That's why…."

He shook his head. "Anyway. Good fight, even if you weren't trying!"

"I wasn't _not_ trying. You've picked up new skills. I'm impressed."

The smile was better this time. "That means a lot, coming from you. Why are you being so nice?"

Sephiroth tilted his head. What a strange question. He was being nice?

"You're mother-henning me. Pizza. _Compliments_."

Sephiroth shrugged. "You've been worrying everyone." _Your mother is dead._ "You…asked? For help?"

"I did?" Now Angeal was squinting at him, and he was suddenly self-conscious. If Angeal had not asked for help, then did he _want_ it?

Had Sephiroth been overstepping, humiliating himself without noticing, had he…

"You asked for _advice,_ " Sephiroth said at last, sorting the relevant memories into a coherent order.

Fortunately, Angeal smiled. He searched the expression for mockery, but didn't think there was any. "And you extrapolated from there?"

Sephiroth tipped his head noncommittally. He supposed he had.

"Well, I can't say I regret the results of making myself your business so far," said Angeal, which was a remarkable statement considering it had been Sephiroth's meddling that had put him in a position to provoke his mother to her death.

Sephiroth still hadn't dismissed the simulated forest scene, because it was a pleasant environment even with a large hole burnt into it, and because if he did so they would have to leave. Angeal passed the broadsword aimlessly from one hand into the other, as though bothered by having no second harness to stow it on. As though carrying the thing around with nowhere to store it had not already been his habit for _years_.

A flash of exposed red made Sephiroth frown. "You're hurt."

Angeal turned the palm of his dominant hand over, eyebrows twitching at the abraded skin and smudged blood. Blisters, burst. "So I am." Magic glowed, and a Cure spell from the Restore he must have equipped sealed the injuries as if they had never been, save the bloodstains. "Fixed."

What was he to think of this new Angeal, who took absurd risks and hurt himself without any sign of hesitation, and behaved as though healing a wound was the same as being unharmed? There seemed presently about equal odds that he would die as soon as he returned to duty, or that he would become formidable as never before.

Well, he had an implicit endorsement of his 'mother henning,' at least.

"Get some new gloves," Sephiroth directed, pulling out his PHS to shut down the training room. "They make them without fingers, if you insist on being able to evaluate textures constantly."

Angeal snorted. "You noticed that?"

"Difficult to miss."

Angeal shrugged a little, with one shoulder, as the trees dissolved around them into green and then into nothing, as if to say he couldn't dispute that.

"Angeal," Sephiroth said, and dark blue SOLDIER eyes flicked expectant up to his face.

And—that might be the heart of the oddness, really. Or in fact it was only incidental, he was sure, but it was that part that unsettled _him._ Angeal had never been precisely distant, but he'd never had Genesis' demanding, nearly belittling intimacy, either. Sephiroth had never made Angeal nervous, that he'd noticed, nothing to create a space of aversion between them, but he'd—he had accepted Sephiroth as he presented himself, and never pushed further. Never studied Sephiroth's behavior, or interfered with it beyond the level of periodically nagging him about his health.

Courtesy. Disinterest. Both.

Angeal _now_ —he wasn't pushing, exactly. Not outside those fitful moments where he asked unsettling questions and hung on Sephiroth's answers as though the fate of the world were at stake. He hadn't even asked for half as much as Sephiroth had freely given. He only—looked at him as if to look straight through to his bones.

It felt when those looks cut into him as though his skin had been scoured off, and his blood evaluated for some liminal quality as it poured free, but he didn't feel as angry about it as that thought made him feel he should. Only—exposed. As though Angeal had stumbled inadvertently upon some secret of his, and now Sephiroth had to live with it being known.

But Sephiroth had no secrets. Only things Angeal had avoided noticing, like the truth of war, and—it could not just be that. Was it? Erased enemy villages and wracking nightmares and some buried truth about his own background, and then his mother's death—all of that together was certainly _enough_ to account for all Angeal's strangeness.

It could account for it. So why could Sephiroth not be satisfied that it _did?_

"Angeal," he repeated. Because he was not the one with secrets, was he. "Are you…ever going to…explain."

The question had lost all its energy by the time it finished unspooling—why would he expect Angeal to explain, to explain specifically to _him_ , when he didn't even known enough of the problem to frame a useful question about it, when Angeal had only a few days ago _explained_ to his mother and seen it result in her death? Hadn't he already decided it was enough to understand that the Science Department had done _something?_

Sephiroth was used to falling short of whatever hidden steps allowed people to weave their way inward toward terms of personal intimacy. Why did it upset him more now?

Angeal sighed.

"Never mind," Sephiroth said. Probably too sharply. "It doesn't matter."

Angeal snorted. "Doesn't matter?" he shook his head. "It's probably annoying being fed half-truths," he reflected. "I _know_ it's annoying. I'm not trying to frustrate either of you. Things are just complicated."

Sephiroth shrugged, and maybe that _was_ why it bothered him so much more. Angeal had confided in him, and so he felt like he should understand, but Angeal hadn't confided enough to make him _capable_ of understanding. "Genesis has been complaining?" he asked.

"Mm. He sent me an email about how rude you are. And about Mom," Angeal added, lest Sephiroth think Genesis had completely forgotten about Angeal's grief in the face of his own outrage. "I shouldn't have said what I did. He was attached to her. She…she did like him, I think. She thought he was a good child, really. She just _watched_ him, sometimes, and would get…quiet when I talked about him."

Why, Sephiroth wanted to ask. Why, why, why. But it wasn't his business, was it? He sent Masamune away again.

"We should probably vacate the facilities now, unless you want another bout."

Angeal shook his head, and with the press of a button the door slid open, and they left the training room. Sephiroth announced his intention to have lunch and asked Angeal to join him, but his friend said he wasn't hungry, and anyway he needed to go to the bank.

The automatic monthly gil transfers to his mother needed canceling.

Sephiroth could imagine _that_ chore ruining the appetite. He went alone to the mess to retrieve a sandwich, to eat in his office.

The role reversal of _his_ pushing _Angeal_ to remember to eat was wearing very thin. Especially because he wasn't particularly good at it. He hated doing things he wasn't good at.

He wished now he'd paid better attention to Angeal's little fits of fretting over the past few years, so he could turn them around on him now, but then again he'd probably only remind Angeal of his mother more, by imitating him more precisely.


	5. Do You Fear Yesterday Will In Some Way

**Angels Still Have Faces**

Chapter 5 Do You Fear Yesterday Will In Some Way

* * *

It was after he'd consumed his late lunch and spent about forty minutes on his paperwork that he was intercepted in the hall, on the way to dispose of his sandwich wrapping and styrofoam coffee cup in one of the centrally located waste receptacles.

Most people, he was aware, would throw the packaging away in their office trash bin and forget about it, but the janitors only came through once every two weeks, and the traces of meat and dairy on the wrappings would turn rancid long before that, and he had to deal with enough foul odors on the Science levels and whenever he was called to a meeting in the board room, without adding any miasma to his own workspace. Besides, it gave him an excuse to stretch his legs a little.

It also made him slightly more available to the troops, which he didn't actually regard as a benefit. It was probably at least in the vicinity of his duty, though. It wasn't as though they could approach _Heidegger_ with operational issues and expect to have them resolved.

It was a Second today, no one distinctive enough for him to put a name to, but he let himself be stopped.

"SOLDIER," he acknowledged, looking down at the smooth surface of the young man's helmet.

"General," said the Second, "Ah. It's. About the Commander?"

Sephiroth's first reaction was 'what has he done now?' Not that people approached him very _often_ to complain about Genesis; mostly the SOLDIERs under the dramaturge's command tolerated him without much fuss when he became difficult, and in some cases seemed to enjoy it. (Sephiroth liked Genesis but couldn't imagine _enjoying_ his more extreme moods.)

Even when intercession _was_ called for, people usually approached Angeal, on the basis that he was more approachable.

But occasionally Angeal was unavailable, or judged an insufficient deterrent since he and Genesis had the same rank, and Sephiroth was hesitantly importuned about a particular piece of paperwork somewhere on the Commander's riotous desk that _really had to_ be filed yesterday, or about the extra PT the Commander had assigned several squads that conflicted with mission scheduling, or about the fact that the Commander had willfully misinterpreted a wide range of behaviors as volunteering for a Loveless seminar and no one could figure out how to un-volunteer, so they were hoping the weekly meetings could be declared officially canceled.

Angeal _was_ unavailable now, and yet Sephiroth found himself questioning his first assumption almost immediately. Because…that anxiety wasn't the one of resorting to registering a complaint with an unapproachable superior officer.

More like…concern.

"Angeal, you mean."

"Yes sir. We heard he's on leave because his mother died. How is he…doing?"

Sephiroth paused. Considered. "As well as can be expected," he decided.

The Second's mouth tightened. "I heard it was bad."

This seemed intended, indirectly, to be a question. "His mother is dead," Sephiroth pointed out. He trusted that was fairly generally regarded as 'bad.'

"Rumor has it she was murdered and the Commander found the body," said the Second. Ah. Fishing.

"I was not at the scene," Sephiroth said, glaring austerely down his nose. "And the circumstances of Angeal's loss are none of SOLDIER's business." He turned to go, and the Second's voice stopped him, a hasty blurted:

"There's another rumor that he killed her."

Sephiroth turned back, his skin feeling tight, and his expression must have been forbidding because the man turned his face away, so it was obvious even through the helmet that he was averting his eyes.

"No one believes it, of course. But some people like to spread the most exciting version of a rumor they can find, so…"

So he wanted official word to push back with.

Technically, Sephiroth had only Angeal's word to go on. It was enough. "Angeal did not murder his mother," he said firmly.

"Thank you, sir," said the Second. Saluted, and scurried off.

Sephiroth looked after him, thinking vaguely that he ought to have gotten a name.

He emailed Angeal asking him to meet at the mess for dinner, threw away his trash, and got back to work.

Angeal messaged back agreement, and was waiting for Sephiroth at seven when he reached Cafeteria C, Security Personnel. "Mother hen," he greeted, and Sephiroth rolled his eyes. He had due cause.

The place was crowded at this hour, which at least promised the meal wasn't too revolting. It turned out to be some sort of fish patty, defrosted and fried and served on a slightly stale bun with boiled tubers and shredded cabbage. Sephiroth took over the emptiest table available near a wall by the expedient of walking toward it decisively, until the three troopers currently occupying it grabbed their trays and fled.

"Did you have to make them do that?" Was that the same degree of amused Angeal usually sounded when these things happened? More? Less?

"I made no one do anything," Sephiroth replied, setting his tray down carefully where he could put his back to the wall. "It was their decision that they didn't want to share a table with us."

"I suppose." Angeal put his tray down at Sephiroth's right but didn't sit. "I'll grab us drinks. What do you want?"

"Coffee?"

Angeal nodded and went over to wait for his turn to feed gil into the vending machines. A couple of people stepped out of the way when they noticed who he was, or possibly just recognized the SOLDIER First uniform, but he didn't shoo them aside the way Genesis would have, and it wasn't nearly as many as tended to make way for Sephiroth.

…he'd never managed to decide how many of them genuinely felt his time was more valuable than theirs, as opposed fearing some sort of repercussions for inconveniencing him.

He wasn't entirely above taking petty vengeance for equally petty offences, but he didn't actually class being _made to queue_ as an indignity worthy of retribution. Not that anyone needed to know that. He didn't enjoy queueing, either.

Sephiroth ate his tubers while Angeal was in line, which meant half spooning up the atrocious bland things and half transferring them onto Angeal's plate. When Angeal came back with a canned coffee for Sephiroth and a canned juice for himself, he eyed the expanded pile of root vegetables dubiously, but said nothing. Sephiroth passed him the salt.

They didn't talk much as they ate, at first. This wasn't the place for anything personal, and neither of them was the type to chatter just to fill a silence.

"How's work?" Angeal asked after a while.

"Tedious," said Sephiroth. He should see if he could coax the mission assignment program into letting him pick up a routine combat mission, at least. Something with monsters.

"Of course. Do you know when you'll be sent out West again?"

"No." Angeal's leave had required shuffling the schedules of all the Firsts. "Soon, probably."

Angeal sighed. "Soon," he acknowledged.

Sephiroth was looking forward to being back in the field. To having people try to kill him, and killing them back. A sharp clean interaction, with only that one essential intention between them, and over once it was done.

But even though that simplicity would be a relief, strategic mire and supply issues and troop discipline and all…he did worry, slightly, about leaving Angeal alone. "Will you make up with Genesis soon?" he asked. There were probably more graceful ways to say that. He didn't know them.

Angeal stopped prodding his fish patty, put the bendy plastic fork down—not with the deliberate precision of someone about to launch into a speech, but as though he couldn't be bothered with it anymore. "I don't… _want_ to quarrel with him, exactly," he said. "I never did. But…"

Sephiroth picked up the remaining half of his ridiculous fish sandwich in a bid to relax the atmosphere. It didn't work, so he sat there with it pointlessly in his hand as he asked, finally, at the end of his rope, "What did he _do?_ "

Angeal sighed. Laced his hands together, and dropped his forehead onto the thumb-edge of the result while his elbows rested on the thin edge of table outside his dinner tray. "That's the problem," he said. "He didn't do it."

"Well, what did he _fail_ to do then?"

Angeal shook his head without raising it. "Not that either."

"You can tell me if it's none of my business." Sephiroth was aware the mutter in which he said this verged on the childish, but it was this peevishness or real irritation, and he was still feeling slightly too protective to allow himself the latter.

"It's not that." Angeal looked up now, his joined hands flattening down onto the table. He nudged his dinner back with the backs of his wrists to make room. "It is your business, as much as it's anyone's. It's just…difficult to talk about."

He looked away, before his eyes could cut Sephiroth down to the bone again, across the mess at the troopers and SOLDIERs eating and talking. One man was kneeling up on the seat of his chair to make his excited arm gestures more visible as he recounted some adventure to his table companions. Fighting something with wings, it looked like.

"I am trying," Angeal said. "To find. The right way. To address the problem."

Alright, then. "Is it something that can wait until we get back from Wutai again?" he asked. "If you don't resolve it before Genesis and I redeploy?"

"It _can_ wait," Angeal said. Cracked one of those not very happy smiles. "I'm not sure that it _should_."

Impossible to have input on that with this little information. Sephiroth shrugged. Angeal snorted, and shook his head, but there was a pull at the corner of his mouth to suggest a smile. With a clear effort of will, he picked up his fish-based sandwich and took a bite. "Yum," he said blandly.

"Mm," Sephiroth agreed, and bit into his own, to continue setting a good example. There were certainly worse things the cafeteria could and did produce.

"Should have gotten some mustard," Angeal reflected aloud, having swallowed. "Still," he shrugged, took another bite, swallowed with very minimal chewing, as though his body had belatedly informed him about the absence of lunch. "Better than making do in the wild. You would not believe which monsters turn out to have edible parts."

"When have you had to scrounge in the wilderness?" Sephiroth asked. Maybe the trip from Banora to Midgar? He was fairly sure his two friends had come to the Eastern Continent together, and Genesis had insisted on renting a car once they got off the boat.

They might not have bought any food, he supposed, but if Genesis could insist Angeal into joining him in not walking he could _probably_ push him into sharing food, even if he had to agree to be reimbursed for the cost once Angeal had a paycheck, or something.

Angeal shrugged. "Oh, I got into all kinds of adventures as a kid," he said, in transparent evasion, and then took a ridiculously large bite of his fish thing. Sephiroth ate his cabbage. It was very bland.

"Have you been breaking regulation in the field and doing unauthorized hunting?" he asked, because monster-hunting as a child had seemed like the most reasonable theory, before it was suddenly, obviously a lie.

"Hah! Not that I wouldn't," Angeal allowed, "if it seemed like we needed to. I'm very practical about food, remember that."

"As if I could forget it," Sephiroth grumbled. He'd been nagged enough over the past few years about looking too thin. His _complaint,_ of all things, was what got an honest smile out of Angeal.

"But Shinra's quartermasters haven't grown so crooked as to start starving us, so no."

Angeal didn't explain in what context he'd supposedly gotten insight into obscure monster edibility, and Sephiroth let it lie, along with everything else.

They finished eating and, without discussion, left the mess together. Sephiroth considered several courses of action, then decided to, for the moment, just to tag along with Angeal and see how his friend reacted.

Angeal had a frown bending his face, his eyes unfocused as he worked through some knotty problem. When Sephiroth turned with him as they left the cafeteria he acknowledged his presence with a glance, but Sephiroth said nothing and Angeal seemed content to let that continue.

There was something hunted in him, almost, as he strode along the corridors. On leave, but with nowhere to go but work—a lot of SOLDIERs were like that, really. It was dangerous work, so it attracted those with few attachments and discouraged forming strong new ones once you were in.

And SOLDIER paid fairly well, but not enough that, if you came from halfway around the world, you wanted to routinely blow your savings on a trip around the world to visit your parents for a week. And Angeal no longer had a home to go to.

Lots of the men had girls in town, but Angeal had never been the type.

Angeal got on an elevator that only connected upper floors, rather than one that would get him back to Plate level in one shot, and thence back to his nice private barrack where he might or might not have washed any mugs yet. Sephiroth raised his eyebrows but didn't argue, even when Angeal got off before they reached the connection to the lower floors, at the warren of a level just above the SOLDIER floor where most of the lower-level military admin offices were to be found, and went marching in double-time up the blank corporate corridors.

Angeal seemed to be heading in the general direction of the area where officers of sufficient rank to be buried in paperwork were granted desk space to do it, but whether that was his goal or just a matter of habit he could not say.

"Angeal," Sephiroth said after a little less than a minute of double time, easily able to keep up with his slightly longer legs and greater agility, but still bemused. "Are we in a hurry?"

Angeal shrugged. Just nervous energy then, probably.

Sephiroth waited until they'd reached an abandoned stretch of corridor, where all the offices belonged to people in either Wutai or bed. "How are you…getting along?"

"I'm fine," said Angeal.

"Hm. I thought you'd want to know. That…" He searched for diplomacy. "Some of the gossips are of the opinion you must have killed your mother yourself, to be so distraught."

Angeal snorted. Sephiroth couldn't decide whether he seemed pained. "Shinra," he said. Shook his head.

"What, is the gossip different elsewhere?"

"A bit." Angeal failed to elaborate as to how, and kept walking just a little too fast.

Sephiroth wondered where they were going, considering Angeal was on leave and not supposed to be going to his office, and then they turned a corner and there was Genesis. Coming out of _his_ office, which was actually the same office. They shared a space that had been found, on measurement, to be exactly three square feet larger than Sephiroth's, which was already small for one.

Angeal stopped abruptly, as if against a wall, as if he hadn't counted on seeing his best friend. Sephiroth guessed he still hadn't answered those emails. Because he still didn't know how to talk about whatever Genesis hadn't actually done.

"Angeal," said Genesis, just as sharply and abruptly. Made a visible effort to restore at least the appearance of equilibrium. "You haven't been answering your phone."

"I've been busy," said Angeal, who had had an hour to spend with Sephiroth in the VR room and another half of one for dinner. From the look on Genesis' face, he'd heard about their spar.

Angeal might or might not have noticed this accusatory expression; he was looking away. He wasn't a good liar.

"I'm sorry about Gillian," Genesis said, with the same harassed rush. Angeal winced, closed his eyes for a moment.

Opened them, and actually looked Genesis in the face. "It wasn't your fault," he said, with peculiar emphasis. "You didn't do anything."

"Well, obviously. _Condolences_ , then, does that satisfy your high grammatical standards?"

"Thank you." The words came out short, dutiful. Angeal sighed. "I'm sorry for what I said. Mom did like you. She worried about you. It was…" He looked away.

"Ripples form on the water's surface...the wandering soul knows no rest." Genesis pursed his lips. "I didn't know she was unhappy."

Angeal sighed. "I did. I thought…I used to think it was just about Dad." He shook his head. "What happened was my fault, Gen, I can't blame it on you. There was…something I decided I had to tell her, and…I broke the news in the worst possible way. I didn't explain well at all. So Mom decided she was the problem, and…somehow I convinced her she _had_ to…."

This was awful to listen to. Sephiroth felt a sudden surge of frustrated anger at Angeal for putting him through this, and followed it up with a larger, cleansing surge at the dead Gillian Hewley for putting _Angeal_ through it.

"' _Somehow you convinced her_ ,'" Genesis echoed, slightly mocking. "If you don't even know _how_ you provoked such a reaction I think the main responsibility is probably on her for making the decision!"

Angeal's jaw tightened. "Fine, I _do_ know how. I thought with the circumstances as they were, she'd react differently, because the problem hadn't come to a head yet, but I was _stupid_ and made the worst-case scenario sound inevitable, and she put her guilt ahead of everything and _gave up._ "

He dragged a breath in through lungs that sounded half-full of water and turned his face away again, for a moment, fists working. Sephiroth wondered if he was imagining the way the note in Angeal's voice as he said _gave up_ reminded him of the twist in his own chest, when he couldn't avoid thinking about how Professor Gast had left.

Why had he ever assumed a mother would have been someone reliable? Women were just as capable of failing in their obligations as men.

"So stop blaming yourself," ordered Genesis. " _She_ gave up. It was nothing you did." He raised a hand, palm up. "You can't take responsibility for her, any more than you can for me…for us…for the war. Let it go. Why hold onto this sorrow? It cannot help the dead."

"Oh, Gen." Angeal smiled, slightly, but he continued to look heartbroken. "You never change, do you?" Shook his head. "I'm not responsible for you, you're right. And I didn't make Mom's choices. But that doesn't mean I haven't made mistakes. I'm…responsible for my part of the war, at least."

"Oh, your part!" Genesis tossed his head, hair flicking out with the motion but not as much as it would with less product in it. "Your part! Your _ever so shameful_ part. Are you going to drag this after you forever, now, too? How much heavier is a dead enemy than a stolen apple? Or do they weigh _less_ , because it was an honorable fight, and you were doing your _duty?_ "

"Gen…"

"I never expected this from you!" Genesis exclaimed, apparently having hit the limit of his self-restraint. "You're _reliable_ , you always have been. You don't go changing your mind at the touch of a mere breeze!"

"This isn't—"

"Did you really think dreams were something attained without cost, without sacrifice? Did you really sail along all these years _lying_ to yourself about what we were doing and what it meant, until suddenly one day you opened your eyes and—"

" _Genesis,_ " Angeal said, and—his voice did something unfamiliar. Something it hadn't done even in his apartment, explaining his mother's death. It… _broke._

Genesis' voice ground to a halt, eyes wide.

"Stop," said Angeal. It almost seemed like he might add _please_ and Genesis looked terrified that he might.

He pressed his lips together until they almost vanished, as though to emphasize that he _had_ stopped.

Angeal shook his head. The broken look had retreated, but not gone, and the weary fondness that rose up again overlapped and blended with it, like blood and mud mingling in water. "You're just…so _much_ sometimes," he said. "Always, actually. Doesn't it get exhausting?"

"Did you just ask me if I find…my own personality exhausting?"

"Heh. I guess I did." Angeal shrugged, and now he was smiling, and the brokenness was only in his eyes. "People can get fed up with their own personalities. Planet knows."

This last was said with such wry emphasis that the only interpretation Sephiroth could come to was that he spoke from personal experience. It was peculiar to consider that someone like _Angeal,_ who while occasionally annoying was a fairly restful presence, might find himself exhausting.

Then he considered that if the exhortations to pursue your ambitions without abandoning your principles were coming _constantly_ from _within your own head,_ they would probably try the patience much more intensely.

Not so peculiar after all.

" _You're_ exhausting," Genesis grumbled, folding his arms. "Look, are you ever going to tell us what your problem is? I mean—besides Gillian. Before that. Something set you off, and I'm tired of you hinting around the edges."

"…alright," Angeal said, unexpectedly, after a moment. "I suppose now is as good a time as any."

"Really?"

"Why did you ask if you didn't expect an answer?"

"To officially air my grievances, of course. _My friend, your desire is the bringer of life._ I've been asking what this was all about for weeks. Why now?"

Angeal's expression was complicated, and Sephiroth found it unreadable, but there was at least a hint of a wry smile. "I guess I've seen what happens when I keep things to myself."

Sephiroth wasn't sure of the logic there—hadn't his mother's death been a nearly-direct result of confiding in her?—but he wasn't going to question it, if it meant he was getting answers.

"I'd rather avoid eavesdroppers," Angeal announced.

"Fine," said Genesis. "Restaurant."

"…I've picked up a tail, the last couple of times I went out."

The kind of tail that wore a very particular style of black suit, Sephiroth suspected. The Turks wouldn't even deny it if confronted, he was sure—Angeal was on compassionate leave for, implicitly, mental health reasons. They could cite concern for his wellbeing. He was a valuable enough investment at this point that that _might_ even be their primary motive.

Sephiroth nodded.

"I know a place."


	6. Cut Your Soaring Wings

**Angels Still Have Faces**

Chapter 6: Cut Your Soaring Wings

* * *

The President was in Costa del Sol for the week—on vacation. He didn't take many of these, preferring to mix business and leisure in the name of efficiency, but perhaps he genuinely wished to improve relations with his wife. More likely he was plotting the total economic domination of the port city and hadn't felt the need to advertise the fact on his calendar.

In his absence, only a handful of people could access the top floor of Shinra Tower. The executive board members, the head of the Turks.

 _Not_ the man's son, possibly because he was rarely in the building, but also because the President had been heard to say he couldn't encourage the boy to come get underfoot.

(Rufus was thirteen now; the army accepted recruits at fourteen, perhaps the President would start keeping him around for more intensive training as his successor after that birthday passed.)

In the President's absence, the only reasons anyone would come to his personal office were to access any files kept in the President's desk, most of which were either more readily available elsewhere or under heavy secondary security anyway and thus inaccessible without him, or to use the helipad.

Or, in a few rare cases, to talk privately. Because, as most of those credentialed to reach the top floor knew but very few others did, the President's private level was the only place in Shinra Tower that was not only outside the standard security grid, which was full of blind spots, but which the Turks were explicitly forbidden to surveil.

Sephiroth had access to the penthouse floors. He'd always had it, even well before his final promotion. The President had always liked to call him up and question him about his progress, about his lessons, about the results of Hojo's latest ideas, and had eventually declared around age ten that it was ridiculous to have to send some other high-clearance (and thus high-value) employee to fetch him every time. Inefficient.

Hojo had sniffed in approval at being able to send Sephiroth off to those interviews without interrupting his own work. Though periodically the President had still summoned them both, and asked Hojo the questions while Sephiroth gave demonstrations. Hojo tolerated this sort of encroachment from the President as from no one else. He knew where his funding came from, and Shinra never minded anything else Hojo did, so long as he got his way.

Genesis' eyebrows were halfway to his hairline as Sephiroth led his two friends through the last secure door and into the opulent, deserted office. "I take it this is another of your special prerogatives as Shinra's pet hero?" he inquired archly, even as he made his way up the last flight, open and golden, that led supplicants up to the foot of the towering UFO of a desk.

Sephiroth shrugged, and continued toward the door that led to the helipad outside.

He led them all the way out to near the furthest edge, so that if someone _did_ enter the office they might see them talking, but would have no chance of coming close enough to hear without being observed.

Angeal kept walking even after Sephiroth stopped, up to the very edge of the helipad, its inset steel safety railing coming to below waist level even on Genesis. Placed one foot on the concrete lip in which the safety railing was rooted, and stared out across Midgar and beyond for long enough that Genesis shifted restlessly.

Sephiroth was taking in the view as well. He could not find it in himself to be comforted by the sight of Midgar very much _not_ on fire, as he had dreamed it, which annoyed him. He wasn't like Angeal, had never particularly aspired to _goodness_. But he did like to be _productive_. And he didn't…

He had never liked being seen as one of Hojo's monsters.

Was that how Angeal thought of him? He didn't have any evidence of that. But there was _something—_ something tied up with Sephiroth and the Science Department that had had Angeal dreaming dreams of slaughter at Sephiroth's hands, ones that weighed on him enough to ask what Sephiroth would want, if they were to come true.

He couldn't claim to be a good enough man to rather die than commit some dreadful crime. His life was not precisely precious to him, but it was certainly the most valuable thing he had, and he would not give it up out of any sense of nicety, to anything but force. But…to be reduced to some rabid thing and go on living without self…that, he did not want.

It was a mercy, to kill monsters grown sufficiently mako-mad, to slay the twisted things that escaped from Hojo's great glass jars. It was a mercy he would wish. He had not lied.

"Well?" said Genesis. "How long are you planning to keep us hanging?"

Angeal did not quite startle, but he seemed ruffled, as he took his foot off the concrete step and turned back. "Right. I was just…thinking. About what to say."

"The _truth_ , please."

"Truth isn't always a simple beast," Angeal said after a moment. "You of all people should know that."

Genesis' lip curled faintly. " _I_ should? More than most? Really, Angeal. I know you're angry with me, but that's no excuse for all these dramatics."

Sephiroth raised an eyebrow at _this_ particular choice of words from _this_ speaker, and Angeal actually snorted, amusement creasing the corners of his eyes, before going solemn and uncomfortable again. "I'm not angry," he said.

Genesis tsked. "'Not angry.' I'm not an idiot and I've known you all your life. I know what angry looks like on you. You're angry."

"Alright," Angeal allowed after a moment, to Sephiroth's interest— _he_ hadn't been able to tell that. "I'm angry. But not exactly at you, and mostly not about the war."

" _Must you be so vague?!_ " Genesis demanded, with a despairing hand to his brow.

"It's hard," said Angeal, and nothing else.

Sephiroth gritted his teeth. _Get on with it._

"I don't know why it's so hard," Angeal reflected. "Why it keeps being so hard. Having this kind of conversation."

"An excess of tormented masculinity?" suggested Genesis sourly.

Angeal blinked at him. "Uh," he said. "I doubt it? My father was always very open with his feelings, it was Mom who had…communication problems."

"Alright, then that's where you get it from." Genesis seemed impatient. "You always did take after her."

Angeal's face tightened a little, which of course made sense to Sephiroth knowing what he did about Hollander's claims, but possibly not to Genesis. Angeal said, as if lightly, "Well, she _was_ in the sciences, originally. They're known for their emotional detachment."

"And _clearly_ ," interjected Sephiroth, "it is a counter-survival behavior, which you should not emulate."

Angeal stared at him. Seemingly against his will, the corners of his mouth started to twitch up.

Before it could break into a full smile he plastered one hand over his face and rocked with what seemed, on close examination, to be silent laughter. "Yes, Sephiroth," he said from behind his hand, shoulders shaking. "You're right. Not talking about my problems or relying on others is a _counter-survival behavior_. Thank you for that insight. _Sephiroth._ "

"You don't have to keep saying my name," he grumbled.

"I'm sorry. Of course you don't know why that's so funny. Ah. Well. I really am trying."

"In your own time," prompted Sephiroth. He knew he didn't need to put any particular effort into being acidic for that to be understood as a goad by his friend, who snorted.

"Right again," he said, as though there was another joke Sephiroth didn't understand. "I'll…get to the point." He pursed his lips, and then instead of launching into an explanation, he posed a question. "Do you think of the world as something worth preserving?"

"What?" Genesis squinted. "Is this another honor thing, or is it about the war again?"

"Yes. No. It's not…just answer the question."

"Well…yes, I suppose. Of course. That's what heroes do, is it not? And if the world were destroyed that would be the end of everything. _To preserve the earth, the seas, the sky_ …."

Angeal's eyes turned to Sephiroth, though the demand in them was less urgent than when he looked at his childhood friend. "I told you," Sephiroth said. "If I did such a thing as threaten the world, then you should use SOLDIER to stop me."

A nod from Angeal, more suspicious expressions from Genesis at having been left out of this previous conversation. Angeal turned to look out over the city. "And _this_ world?" he asked. "This world of Midgar…Shinra's world, this bright light…is this something it's important to protect?"

"It's our _job_ ," said Genesis. "Which makes it our duty. How are _you_ the one asking that?"

"Sephiroth?" Angeal prompted, rather than replying to Genesis. His voice was hard to read. The back of his head revealed nothing.

"…of course," Sephiroth said.

Angeal sighed. "Yes," he said. "Of course. But I…don't know if I still believe that."

Sephiroth felt as if Angeal had gotten a punch through his defenses and right below his sternum, because he'd been expecting sedition of course, but…not this.

"What are you saying?" Genesis demanded.

"I asked myself," said Angeal, strangely abstract, as though if they could have seen his eyes they would have been unfocused onto some greater distance than Midgar alone, "if it was a choice between this floating world and the Planet…then of course there's no choice, because if the world dies we all die with it.

"But this bright world, of dreams and gil and…power…was it important enough to _risk_ losing everything, trying to find a third way? Trying to save this, too?"

"Explain yourself," Sephiroth demanded.

"Whatever crazy things you've been listening to," Genesis said, his tone suggesting support for Sephiroth's point even though he was interfering with the intended effect of the command by following it up with more words, "of course it's worthwhile! Even if all the culture and industry here doesn't matter to you for itself, the city is full of people who depend on us, on Shinra. Of course it's worth protecting! What's wrong with you?"

"Is it, though?" Angeal half-turned back toward them in a twist of spine, his right foot only opening up a little but his head turned far enough they could almost see his left eye, as well as his right. " _Is_ it?" His left arm brandished out over the lights of Midgar, shining orderly and bright far below, the eternal green glow of the reactors. "This city squats like a toad over so much rot. Most of the city's population lives in the slums, you know. Down in the dark and soot where the factories are. They never see the sun. Their water is only clean if it's stolen.

"And it's not an accident. Even Shinra's lower middle-managers can't afford to live up on the Plate. They ride the train Urban Development built up to work, from the unplanned warrens and the ruins of the towns that used to be here, before Midgar rose. Every day. Every _single_ day."

His shoulders sagged; his arm dropped. He turned his back on Midgar. "Is this really worth fighting for?" he asked. "To preserve a world like this? To help it grow? A world of lights, where the light only falls on the most fortunate?"

"We _earned_ this," Genesis said tightly, which seemed like an answer to a different question than Angeal had asked. "We _deserve_ the light."

"Oh, Gen." Angeal was sorrowful. "That's never been what anything was about."

The anger that flashed over Genesis' face turned it ugly in a way Sephiroth had never seen before, and then the raw nasty twist of it was banished again and he was drawing himself up, proud and offended and scornful and untouchable as a statue of gold. "Of course it was. You didn't leave Banora for SOLDIER just because you thought you could do more _good_ here. You wanted some of that light for yourself, the same as I did. Probably more."

Angeal looked away. His sigh was shallow, voiceless. His tongue darted over his lower lip. "Yes," he admitted. "I did. And the question of whether I _deserved_ it…mattered a lot to me. Though I don't think in quite the same way as it does to you. But it isn't what _matters_. If you only ever think in terms of what you're entitled to…what happens to everyone who…"

He trailed off. Maybe the end of that sentence would have been enlightening, but Sephiroth could guess it well enough and it wasn't informative _enough._

He decided to try a direct question. "What is it you want?"

Angeal met his eyes, and again they cut down to the marrow of his bones, but his smile was gentle. "To protect you."

Sephiroth narrowed his eyes. "Are we in danger?"

" _Angeal._ " Genesis' voice was strained. "What do you _really_ want?"

"To save the world."

It was the sort of answer that should have been a joke, but even though Angeal showed some sign of finding himself ridiculous, and was smiling, Sephiroth thought he sounded…uncomfortable sincere.

"Could you please be _serious?_ " Genesis grated.

"From what?" asked Sephiroth.

Angeal's eyes cut away over the city. "A lot of things. I don't know if I'm up to it. But I have to be. Because I'm the only one…"

He trailed off, and Genesis stirred, his whole body a study in frustration. "The only one who _what?_ "

"Knows. Though both of you deserve to know some of it, at least." He met Sephiroth's eyes again, for only a second, and they were less cutting this time but Sephiroth hated it no less than ever.

He'd never been precisely bad at reading people, only in knowing what to do with the information he gained or how to contextualize some of it, but…this heavy strain, and open attachment, and cultivated distance were all wrong for Angeal, who had always been so comfortably grounded in himself, and distant only in that he made no particular effort to be intimate.

"Angeal," Genesis said uncomfortably, after a brief silence. "You're not making sense."

Sephiroth didn't entirely agree. Angeal was being more elliptical than he'd hoped for when he'd brought them out here, perhaps not fully trusting the President's assurances of a hole in the surveillance, but what he _had_ said…hung together worryingly well. Especially if you filled in some of the more yawning gaps with _Shinra_ , always Shinra. Shinra science, Shinra war propaganda, Shinra secrets. Everything was always about Shinra, in the end.

"Genesis…" Angeal's eyes pinched with pain, the same way they did when he was trying to walk off an injury. He let them linger on his best friend anyway. He let out a breath. "How about this? _'My soul, corrupted by vengeance, hath endured torment, to find the end of the journey… Pride is lost, wings stripped away, the end is nigh.'_ "

Angeal recited very differently than Genesis. You could tell, listening for it, that he'd memorized these lines by hearing his friend say them, just as Sephiroth had; the inflection rose and fell in a pattern that mimicked Genesis'. But Angeal used his voice very differently. He lingered on words like a man planting his feet on unsteady ground, not like an actor drawing out the spotlight. When he hesitated between two words, it placed focus on the one he had just spoken, as much as building anticipation for the next; each word when he spoke it had its own particular significance, and was never a vehicle for getting to the end of a phrase.

The poem sounded more important this way, and Sephiroth found he liked it better. Even if he understood less what Angeal meant by it.

What had he lost, even before his mother's death, that had sent him to her for support she failed to give? His faith? In what? In his lineage? In Shinra? In _Genesis?_ What had made him feel so trapped? What danger did he see?

What had the Science Department _done?_ Why did his voice take on that ironic twist on the word _vengeance?_

Genesis had looked stricken, and more than slightly bewildered, at the onset of the recitation, but by the end he had settled again, and after a few seconds' pause he raised one hand, palm open to the sky, and answered,

"' _My friend, the fates are cruel. There are no dreams, no honor resides. The arrow has left the bow of the Goddess…'"_

In contrast to Angeal, Sephiroth knew exactly what Genesis meant, even though he had used the same words to mean very different things in the past:

 _This is the way the world works. Your idea of honor was never real. What has happened has happened, and cannot be changed._

Angeal snorted. "You have no idea," he said, "how wrong you are." Looked sharply aside, his jaw clenching. "Would you come with me?" he asked.

Sephiroth squinted. "Where?" he asked, before realizing the question had probably not been meant for him.

Some of the weight in the air, only a little, retreated, and Angeal glanced at him, eyes softer. "If I left Shinra," he clarified. Looked back at Genesis. "Would you come with me?"

"Just—walk away from your career?" Genesis seemed appalled. "You aren't thinking clearly, Angeal. You've had a shock. Don't make any decisions until you've had a chance to even out."

Angeal's face was stone again. "That's what I thought." He turned his head toward Sephiroth. "What about you? Ever thought about quitting?"

"…you know our contracts don't allow early retirement."

"What would they do if we just walked away?" A sharp sort of grin, which barely dismissed the stone. "Really. You. What could they do? Send me and Genesis to drag you back?"

They had never defeated him, even once.

He had never framed that fact in quite such _practical_ terms before, unless you counted Angeal's macabre thought-problem the other day. "Are you suggesting I would kill you for the privilege of being unemployed?" Sephiroth asked stiffly. He was getting sick of this.

Angeal tipped his head back toward the sky and started to laugh.

It was less violent than the laughter that had shaken him at Sephiroth's advice about not imitating his mother, but it was fully aloud, incredulous and lilting at the top of Angeal's vocal range, as though it could easily tip over into hysteria.

And yet…not really bleak.

And not _cruel_ , as Sephiroth usually expected from inappropriate laughter.

Sephiroth and Genesis exchanged uncomfortable glances. Yes, this was strange. No, they didn't know what to do about it. Genesis made a strange grimace, raised one eyebrow, and tipped his head toward Angeal.

Sephiroth looked back at Genesis blankly. Was he supposed to understand that as…instructions? A question? What?

"No," said Angeal, laughter fading. He stepped back, up onto the concrete foot of the safety railing so the steel side of it pressed against the backs of his thighs, adjusting his head back and forth as he went, like he was trying to get both of them at once in-frame for a photograph, although he wasn't carrying a camera, and smiled. It looked like a real smile. "No, I don't think you would, Sephiroth. But I think Shinra would be stupid to count on being able to control any of us."

An interesting choice of words, considering so far as Sephiroth knew the company _did_ rather proceed on the assumption that it could and did maintain control over all its SOLDIERs.

"And I've realized something," Angeal said, and it seemed to be a good thing, because the brightness of this latest laughter was lingering the way his amusement hadn't been lately, even if there was something sharp and raw about it, like the edge of a sword catching sunlight.

Cautious, Genesis inquired, "…what?"

"I need to stop clinging to the past."

Still wearing that gentle, bitter smile, Angeal tipped himself deliberately—it was deliberate, there was no possibility of supposing otherwise, there was no moment at which he suddenly lost control of his center of balance, he _surrendered it_ —backward, over the railing, dropping away over the edge of the building.

Sephiroth flashed forward, with some poorly-formed idea of jumping to the rescue—he'd never tried anything as high as Shinra Tower outside a simulation, but he had a knack for controlling a fall and _he'd charged himself with the mission of protecting Angeal from himself, how could he have been so stupid as to let this happen._

Genesis shouldered his way into his path, brow knitted, eyes wide and angry, "Don't be a—"

Sephiroth ducked around him without comment; if his self-professed rival and Angeal's supposed closest friend would rather slow him down than help in his mission _or_ trust him to accomplish it, Sephiroth had no time for him now.

Even as he dodged around Genesis, though, there came a burst of feathers from just beneath the level of the roof. As though Angeal's fall had intersected the flight path of a very large white bird which had detonated on impact.

And Angeal _rose up again_. A white wing sprouting insanely from one shoulder and fanning the air. As if it was holding him up, when it couldn't possibly be, but _something_ clearly was—Sephiroth caught himself lurchingly against the safety railing and sank his teeth into his tongue in case he was asleep. His mind had never replicated the experience of pain or the taste of blood with even close to such convincing fidelity.

Alright. Either this was reality, or Hojo had him in an induced coma and was experimentally projecting a bizarre narrative about Angeal into his brain.

Angeal's mother had worked in Shinra's labs before he was born. And when he went to talk to her about a dream of becoming a monster, she killed herself.

" _Angeal._ " Genesis spoke before Sephiroth could, before his throat unfroze, though the word came out strangled from him, too.

"I shouldn't have asked if you'd come with me," their friend said, hovering, as white feathers settled from the air around him, and he seemed calm now. Like whatever had been tearing him apart was now settled, and there was nothing to worry over anymore. "It was unfair. I'm not asking you to, now."

"You…" said Sephiroth. They were here for an explanation. This wasn't an explanation. This was…so many more questions.

"You have to make your own choices. I want to protect you, but I can't…change you." Angeal sighed. "Genesis, I'm sorry. I did lie to myself a lot, but I can't afford to...anymore."

"Protect us?" Sephiroth repeated again, because Angeal's insistent focus on their being in danger and persistent refusal to explain the nature of the threat was becoming infuriating, even from someone with extra limbs who could for some reason hover. Like the angels in his dream.

(Or was it only Genesis he was talking to, of protection, and not Sephiroth at all? He couldn't tell, and he hated that he couldn't. But no, the first time he'd said it to Sephiroth directly. He must mean them both.)

"There's so much…" Angeal said. Trailed away, and then, "But you have to decide. Asking the same questions over and over…isn't going to change anything." That much was certainly true.

"But what is…" Sephiroth found himself not so much at a loss for words as with his mouth so full of words that seemed important that he could say none of them.

"Someone once told me, wings symbolize freedom for those who have none. I'm not going to be a monster. I'm not going to ask anyone else to pay the price of my freedom. But I can't stay, either."

"You really are…flying away," said Genesis. _My friend, do you fly away now?_ Loveless, act III.

"Yup."

"Aren't you going to _explain—?"_

"Just ask," Angeal said. He seemed fond now, the way he always _used_ to be when the two of them were arguing without real heat, or when Genesis was enthusing about some facet of Loveless analysis they weren't all bored to death with yet. "Come find me, and ask, and I'll answer as much as I can."

"Tell us _now,_ " said Genesis, and Angeal shook his head, slowly rising away, backward.

"No. I'm leaving now. Come find me."

Because he was _deserting_ , like he'd suggested Sephiroth should do. Because who _would_ Shinra send after him but the two of them, and if he told them everything _now_ they had no reason not to tell the company everything, but if they came and talked when they'd been sent to fight then they would have made a _choice_ to come to him, rather than maintain their loyalty to Shinra.

Of course, they could be _ordered_ to use his trust to subtly interrogate him, and only then take him out. It really came down to…where their loyalties lay. And whether he thought he could trust them.

And whether they could trust _him_.

Once he was out of easy shouting range, and they could no longer make any last remarks, Angeal rose up into the air at tremendous speed, until he was only a speck against the sky, that could be told from an ordinary bird only by the asymmetry you could make out if you looked closely.

Then the wing beat hard, once, and he went arrowing away westward, out of sight.


End file.
